but seems very counterintuitive to have the peep that far from your eyeball. Seems to defeat the purpose.
Kind of a 'double edged sword'
While there is no denying the advantage of a longer sighting plane with the peep farther from the front and closer to the eye this can result in the peep not being too clear and may make sight acquisition more difficult.
With the peep closet to the front both sights may be closer in focus (depending on the person) and while this may result in a clearer sight picture the shorter sight plane will be less forgiving and slight movements can result in dramatic changes in bullet impact.
I had a chance to test this with my new Ruger PCC as it has a barrel mounted peep with a shielded blade front. I was initially concerned about this and it did take a bit of getting used to but I find I really like both the aperture and blade in relatively clear focus. It took a little more concentration to keep the movement to a minimum but after a little practice I managed good consistency and pretty tight groups. Because it is a semi auto I don't have to break cheek weld for follow-up shots but to maintain a similar pattern of having to move the rifle to reload (as in a lever action) I was laying the rifle on my rest while I spotted each shot with binos. Later on I was offhand kneeling with it and really liking my results at 100+ yards on random targets.
