Shooting Glasses and
Hunting Eyewear

By Liz DeFranco, ABOC, NCLC

Shooters of all kinds require eye protection, whether at a shooting range or in a forest or field.

All kinds of shooting activities take place in close proximity to the face. Shotguns and rifles are held on the shoulder, while handguns are no more than an arm's length away. All firearms have a certain amount of recoil, and many shooting activities take place outdoors, where wind, sun and dust are perennial challenges.

Good eye protection makes sense and often is required during organized matches or while shooting on a range. Some rangemasters allow shooters to wear any kind of eyewear they like, but other times certain safety standards come into play.

Generic contoured nonprescription sports goggles are acceptable if you don't require vision correction or if you wear contact lenses. These goggles have a slight wrap around the face and keep wind and dust out.

If you need prescription lenses in order to focus well, or if you simply want to use the best shooting eyewear available, shooting glasses in styles similar to aviator sunglasses are always popular.

The eyewear that is designed for shooters, however, has a few more features to make you more comfortable while using a firearm:

Wiley X Romer II Advanced eyewear offers three interchangeable lenses for various lighting conditions. The lenses are certified as highly shatter-resistant, even when hit by a .15 caliber steel fragment fired at 640-660 feet per second.

• The frame styles generally have a "sweat bar" that runs the width of the frame above the lenses to add more stability to the frame and keep it steady on the face.
• The frames are also made in a rounded shape, to avoid sharp corners that could jab your face.
• Some brands have special padding on the frame around the eyes. The padding cushions the frame against your face in case the gun recoils too far. Also it helps to keep out wind and dust.

More Frame Features To Look for

The temples of shooting glasses are often designed with spring hinges that allow the frame to flex without breaking when recoil occurs. Temples also wrap around the ear in the "cable" style to help keep the frame in place, and the tips of the temples may feature little rounded ends, or "balls," to enhance comfort.

Nose pads are adjustable so that the frame rests in the optimum position, and softer silicone materials are often used for additional comfort.

Some shooting glasses feature bridges that adjust to one of several locking positions so that the glasses are positioned just right for any shot.

The frames are constructed of any number of ophthalmic materials, including titanium and other metals, regular plastic and tough polycarbonate.

How To Choose the Right Lenses

Polycarbonate lenses with a scratch-resistant hard coat and built-in ultraviolet protection have been the lenses of choice for shooting glasses for many years. This lens material is highly impact-resistant to provide you with maximum "blow-back" and "bounce-back" protection. Recently, new materials have been developed that are also very impact-resistant. Ask questions before you buy, to determine which material protects the best.

Many nonprescription shooting glasses come with several pairs of interchangeable lenses for use under different lighting and atmospheric conditions. Prescription lenses can be made to order in whatever color you deem most appropriate.

Many shooters are comfortable in lenses that are yellow or orange. Lenses in these hues block haze and blue light and enhance the orange color of the target. The brighter yellow the lens color is, the better it is for use at night.

Alternatively, a light purple color, which is actually a combination of a neutral gray and a vermilion, is good for enhancing the orange of the target against a background of tall trees.

Vermilion itself is useful to highlight conditions where there is poor background, such as trees, and to enhance the target against the background. Gray is a neutral, or "true," color that lets you see all colors as they are. Gray shooting lenses do not enhance the target, but they are good in bright sunlight.

Polarized shooting lenses can be made in almost any color. Polarized lenses filter out glare and reflection, so outdoor vision is enhanced.

[Page updated March 2007]