Lens Material

Lens Color

Frame Style

Prescription Lenses

Recommended Styles

 

Any person who is involved in shooting sports should wear protective eyewear. They will sharpen your vision, give safety from tree branches, stray bullets, or clay particles, and enhance your performance. Here is what to look for:

Lens Material: Because of the danger of branches, stray bullets, and clay fragments (in clay shooting), you should wear eyewear at all times to protect your eyes from injury. Polycarbonate (PC) is the material that can actually deflect bullets shot directly at it. It the lens material of choice. But, PC scratches easier than any other material. 

Lens Color: In low light conditions, such as morning or overcast days, either a clear lens or a lens with a super anti-reflective coating (AR), or yellow contrast enhancing lens is recommended. An AR coating allows 99% of the light through the lens, where a standard lens lets 92% of the light through. The rest of the light is reflected. The reflected light can scare animals, and send them running. The AR coat absorbs these reflections to help keep you hidden. A yellow contrast enhancing lens will absorb blue light, found in overcast days. This will help make objects against this color background appear brighter, to help you better distinguish an animal in a bush. For sporting clays and skeet or trap shooting, the most popular tint is a light medium target orange (LMTO). This tint is used under bright light conditions and lessens the amount of light to your eye to enhance target recognition.

Frame Style: Most standard sunglass or glass frames sit too low on the face. Thus, when you put your head down to look through the stock of your gun, your eyes catch the upper rim of the frame, and can be distracting. A frame that sits high on the face is recommended. Oversize frames are popular for this reason. Frames designed for cycling also have this feature as cyclists too look out the top of the frames. ANSI rated frames for safety from shrapnel are preferred.

Prescription Lenses: If you have a prescription, the prescription should ground into the shooting glasses with the optical centers placed higher to accommodate the above problem. Most frame styles can fit with a prescription lens, and most can be tinted with the above- mentioned colors.

Recommended Styles:

Wiley-X makes frames and lenses for all types of shooting sports and styles are available with a prescription adapter. They are also safety rated.

Rudy Project and Tifosi also have a tactical line that is ANSI rated and available with prescription and interchangeable lenses for low light conditions. As in morning/evening, overcast days, etc.) and styles are available with prescription.