Shooting With Iron Sights

[Coach]

It seems to always hinge on the front sight

[Deadwood Dutch]

Thanks for your explanations, very interesting. Of course I wear bifocals. My two Henry rifles, the Golden Boy .22 and the Classic lever action .22 will have only factory iron sights. I can still do well at 71 at 25 yards but of course at 50 yards it is getting harder. I have other .22's, one with a scope and one without, both bolt actions. I enjoy my 2 lever action .44 magnums, Marlins, one with and one without a scope. But, my .30-06 760 Gamemaster will always wear a scope for field shooting in deer season. When my eyes get bad enough that I can't use iron sights on my Henry .22's at the range, I'll pack it in. Then it will be time to just stick to hiking and plinking with them.

[Sir Henry]

We had an older gentleman who shot with us every Wednesday. Bill was 92 when he passed and his eyes were so bad we had to lead him around. But when it came to shooting offhand he was the best. I asked him one time how he could shoot so well without being able to see the target. His answer was he didn't need to see it he needed to know where it was in relationship to the rest of his field of view.

[JEBar]

I tend to believe that the choice of rifle and the choice of sights on that rife should be dictated by intended use .... best analogy I can give is one can drive from NC to Calif. on a Moped but that doesn't mean that is what it is designed for .... under some conditions semi automatics reign supreme, under other conditions there are much better choices .... I do believe that folks should be taught to shoot using open sights before moving to a scope .... when I was a member of bear hunting club on the northern slopes of Mt Mitchell shots of 20 yards or less were typical .... under those conditions, open sights were the way to go ..... years later when I was a member of a deer hunting club "down east" in NC, we had one field that was literally over a square mile .... hunting from Texas type tower stands was the norm and long range rifle with a good scope was the order of the day .... I'm due to turn 70 later this year and wear trifocals .... out to a hundred or so yards, depending on the size of the target, I can still usually hit what I aim at with open sights .... all that being said, every rifle I use today has a scope .... the reason is simple, I prefer it that way ..

[CT_Shooter]

This is a great discussion, Ditto; and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

I've been shooting my BB off hand with its standard factory iron sights from the beginning and have slowly and consistently been getting better, though some days are quite a bit better than others. I shoot indoors at 75 feet. On occasion, I can hit the 3/4 inch bull's-eye in a six inch target several times in a session; more often, though, I can just hit the six inch target with each of the 20 shots that I allow per target. Sadly, I still have days when I miss the target completely. But, I'm only competing with myself. So, on those days that I do really well, I come home feeling accomplished. On my worst days, I'm still getting in some range time and it is enjoyable -- even without a single bull's-eye to show for it.

[ditto1958]

We had an older gentleman who shot with us every Wednesday. Bill was 92 when he passed and his eyes were so bad we had to lead him around. But when it came to shooting offhand he was the best. I asked him one time how he could shoot so well without being able to see the target. His answer was he didn't need to see it he needed to know where it was in relationship to the rest of his field of view.

There is a young fellow in his mid-80's who shoots at the range I belong to. He stands up and shoots handguns offhand at clay pigeons that he puts out at 100 yards (actually more than 100, as he sets them on the berm behind the 100 yard fence). It's amazing to see. When he gets tired of that, he puts up spent shotgun shells at 25 yards and shoots them. I think he cheats and sits at a bench for that.

Age is apparently a state of mind.

[Squatch]

I like iron sights too. Nothing against scopes just prefer iron.

However I don't much care for the semi buckhorn Henry uses. I have a 100 year old 22 that has a sheet metal rear sight that's just a wide V. Easy to pick up and see. Not so with the Henry sights for me. Also 2 of my Henry's seem to have had the wrong height front sight installed. On both I couldn't lower the rear sight enough to get closer than 6"-8* of the target. SO!

I've changed all my Henry's to Skinner rear aperture (peep) and Lyman globe front sights. I've had this set up on my BB for a couple of years now and love it. I've had time on that rifle to try different front inserts and different sized apertures in the rear. Now I carry the normal .098" and also a .040 and .070" apertures. At 50 yds the .040 usually gets the nod unless light gets dim then I go bigger. I mainly shoot paper and backyard steel. Though for hunting I would just use a bigger aperture and be fine.

I got to shoot a Sharps at the range a while back with rear vernier sight and front globe. After one shot I knew what I wanted on my rifle.

I also wear progressive lens in my glasses. With the peeps I have found that plain shooting glasses work better without the prescription. If you read up some on apertures you will find that a small aperture actually works as a lens. This was driven home a few weeks ago at the backyard range. I was fine tuning the sights on my Golden Boy with plain glasses. I was shooting off my deep woods front rest at 50 yds using Dirty Bird splatter target (my norm). I found that if I was looking through the sight I could see the small 22 hits on the target. When just looking I could not!

I also learned a long time ago that very few folks can hold really still. Especially with a Handgun. The longer you sit and stare the harder to hit the target. The point is to work on the breathing a bit and watch the front sight on the target. The trick is to work on making the oscillations as small as possible. And then recognize when the sight hits the sweet spot you want and to squeeze the trigger when that happens rather than trying too hard to hold it where you want it.

I also find if I stare too hard my eyes can blur. When that happens stop look up blink and clear your eyes and try again.

This works for me. But I'm sure there are many ways that work for many different people.

Big boy at 50 yds with the above sights, using my woods rest, 240gr American eagle JHP.


The sights.

[ditto1958]

Scratch, you make a good point. Small apertures make everything look focused. An easy way to confirm that is to make a pinhole in an index card and look though it. Everything will look sharp as a tack.

[Sir Henry]

A barrel buckhorn sight might be more stable than a tang sight but the tang will bring the peep closer to your eye and also increase the sight radius. As you can see the tang sight as almost doubled the radius.

[RoadBlocker]

If having no success grouping with open sights, I'll move my target in closer. Get the groups closer, then gradually move the target out again. I'll get used to where the round is hitting and focus on that spot. Some days it's 20 yards, other days maybe stretch it to 30. Always hoping to push it to 50 yards and celebrate.