Does firing a shotgun damage your retina?

TL;DR - nobody knows.

If you spend any time in the weird world of shotgun sports, you'll certainly come across folks who have suffered retinal tears and detachments, and who blame the shooting for it. There are probably more of these people that you won't meet, because they've packed in the sport, and moved on to something less brutal. Cage fighting, perhaps.

Shotguns deliver harsh recoil, not only to the shoulder, but often to the head and face. When I first started shooting clays ("clay pigeons", as we used to call them) I was constantly black and blue from cheek to chest.

Retinal tears and detachments are sight-threatening medical problems, that can progress rapidly if not treated. They sometimes start with a posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) which, although it can produce alarming visual disturbances, is rarely dangerous in itself. Many people -- perhaps most -- will experience PVD at some point, if they live long enough. Most will experience no further problems. It's not obvious what the risk factors are, for PVD progressing to a serious retinal injury.

I suffered a retinal tear a few years ago and lost, perhaps, twenty percent of the vision in one eye.

Doctors, even eye doctors, who aren't shotgunners don't appreciate the stresses that accompany a session of shotgun training, especially with heavy 12-gauge loads in a fully-manual gun.

A semi-automatic shotgun recoils less viciously because it's heavier, and some of the surplus momentum from the shot goes into operating the reloading mechanism. Still, no shotgun is comfortable to shoot for round after round.

We can speculate that "cheek slap" creates a particular risk to the retina. Here the gun recoils not only backwards into your shoulder, but also upwards, so the stock slams into your cheekbone. The butt of the gun is only an inch below your eye, so it's not hard to imagine the impact of the recoil being transmitted to your retina. Serious clay shooters may well be firing hundreds of cartridges in a session, several times a week. That's an awful lot of blows to the face.

So shotgun shooting is surely a plausible explanation for retinal injuries. There's a confounding factor, however.

Shotgun sports are expensive. While the world champions tend to be young-ish people (compared with me, at least), most of us who enter these sports for leisure are getting on in years. Frankly, they aren't affordable if you have a young family, a precarious job, and a mortgage loan to service. At the shooting grounds I visit, most participants are over fifty; some are over eighty.

That's a problem because people in this age range are prone to retinal disorders anyway. Because PVD is so common over the age of fifty, even if the risk of progression from PVD to a serious retinal injury is small, you're always going to find some broken retinas in this age group -- whether they shoot or not. If you do shoot, it's natural to blame it for your retinal problems.

So far as I know, however, there's never been a formal investigation of the link between shotguns and retinal injuries. All the reports we have are anecdotal. The result is that we simply don't know whether shotgun sports are bad for your retinas.

For the keen shooter, this creates a dilemma. So what to do?

Some shotguns do not generate significant recoil. My .410, for example, recoils little more than an air rifle. But you'd have to be a much better shot than me, to hit high clays with a .410. Shooting ranges really aren't set up for this kind of thing. And, weirdly, .410 cartridges are about five times the price of 12-gauge cartridges, despite containing less of everything.

There are few things as cathartic as watching a flying clay explode into vapour, as a result of your perfectly-placed shot. The terrible noise and the vicious recoil, oddly, add to this experience. "Practical" shotgun is also a hoot. This involves running around (very carefully) in a field, blasting away at steel know-down targets. It demands not only skill with the shotgun, but also a measure of athleticism.

As agreeable as these activities are, I don't rate them more highly than my eyesight. So, with a heavy heart, I've given up competitive shotgunning. I'm hoping that medical research will disprove any causal link between shotguns and retinal injuries in my lifetime, so I can return to the sport. But I'm not holding my breath. Maybe I'll take up cage fighting after all.

Published 2026-03-12, updated 2026-03-12

Does firing a shotgun damage your retina?

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