I'm a fan. Quick acquisition. No optical illusions. Point and shoot within 50 ft and you kill what you aim at. Those pests are close to home. Sometimes that's what an airgun has to do. ; )
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Open Blade Sights for Close Kills
- Thread starter MJS
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80% of my airguns use open or aperture sights. A scope has its place, but I like the "magic" of making a shot connect without one.
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I just put a nice set of open sights on my bulldog and my m50 ten inch pistol/SBR. I'm hoping to get out and test them out.
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As excerpted from the chapter titled Air Pistol Sights, Insights And Incites from the book Custom, Classic And Otherwise AWESOME AIR PISTOLS!-
Open ‘Iron’ Sights
Open or ‘iron’ sights were, and remain, absolutely appropriate for their original intents, purposes and applications; those being portability, durability, close-range utility, and/or last-ditch efforts! However, not all iron sights are created equal.
Basic, non-adjustable iron sights often give such a coarse sight-picture as to preclude fine accuracy, especially at extended ranges. As early handgun-hunting pioneers recognized that handicap to their efforts, adjustable sights became more common. But by now, open/iron/mechanical sights may have evolved about as far as they’re likely to.
Even the best adjustable sights are handicapped by human shortcomings; mostly our inability to focus on multiple distances at any one moment. The iron-sight shooter must focus on the target, or his front sight, or the rear sight; leaving two of three objects in the sight-picture out of focus. That’s not conducive to great precision. My best results used to come from alternately focusing on each of the three points, before finally concentrating on the front sight before breaking the shot. Unfortunately my eyes no longer manage such vigorous calisthenics, so my iron-sight shooting ain’t what it used to be!
Iron sights have other foibles limiting their precision. For instance, decades ago I was shooting my .45 auto at a public shooting range that was also used by local police departments. I noticed the only other guy on the 25 yard line was also shooting a .45 auto; not very well. As we checked targets, he complimented my groups and expressed dismay with his own. He’d gotten good results that morning, but worse groups and at a different point-of-impact that late afternoon. Consequently he was very nervous about re-qualifying with his pistol the next day, as Dallas SWAT officers have to occasionally do. I explained how the direct sun hitting his sights from extreme left earlier and extreme right later creates a sight-picture illusion responsible for his issues. He was very thankful to learn light intensity and angle affects POI with iron sights. That I hear nothing about that elsewhere I assume is because few shooters are good enough shots to notice it.
Some pistol competitions remain iron-sight specific, and others include Iron Sight classes or divisions. I still enjoy iron sights; nowadays mostly in competitions rewarding a balance of speed and accuracy. And while my past runnin’-varmint experiences and current speed-plates competitions are separated by decades, those early, runnin’ jackrabbit lessons return huge dividends in Steel Challenge competitions forty years later.
Competition being the best acid-test of equipment, the types of sights most successful in various shooting competitions accurately reflect the strengths and weaknesses of each type. For example, the fastest times of all classes in action-pistol competitions are usually posted with non-magnifying red-dot optics since they reduce iron sights’ three focal points to a one-dimensional ‘picture’. Also, optical sights eliminate the optical illusion inherent with iron sights where point of impact on target is affected by the angle and intensity of light illuminating the sights and target.
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Open ‘Iron’ Sights
Open or ‘iron’ sights were, and remain, absolutely appropriate for their original intents, purposes and applications; those being portability, durability, close-range utility, and/or last-ditch efforts! However, not all iron sights are created equal.
Basic, non-adjustable iron sights often give such a coarse sight-picture as to preclude fine accuracy, especially at extended ranges. As early handgun-hunting pioneers recognized that handicap to their efforts, adjustable sights became more common. But by now, open/iron/mechanical sights may have evolved about as far as they’re likely to.
Even the best adjustable sights are handicapped by human shortcomings; mostly our inability to focus on multiple distances at any one moment. The iron-sight shooter must focus on the target, or his front sight, or the rear sight; leaving two of three objects in the sight-picture out of focus. That’s not conducive to great precision. My best results used to come from alternately focusing on each of the three points, before finally concentrating on the front sight before breaking the shot. Unfortunately my eyes no longer manage such vigorous calisthenics, so my iron-sight shooting ain’t what it used to be!
Iron sights have other foibles limiting their precision. For instance, decades ago I was shooting my .45 auto at a public shooting range that was also used by local police departments. I noticed the only other guy on the 25 yard line was also shooting a .45 auto; not very well. As we checked targets, he complimented my groups and expressed dismay with his own. He’d gotten good results that morning, but worse groups and at a different point-of-impact that late afternoon. Consequently he was very nervous about re-qualifying with his pistol the next day, as Dallas SWAT officers have to occasionally do. I explained how the direct sun hitting his sights from extreme left earlier and extreme right later creates a sight-picture illusion responsible for his issues. He was very thankful to learn light intensity and angle affects POI with iron sights. That I hear nothing about that elsewhere I assume is because few shooters are good enough shots to notice it.
Some pistol competitions remain iron-sight specific, and others include Iron Sight classes or divisions. I still enjoy iron sights; nowadays mostly in competitions rewarding a balance of speed and accuracy. And while my past runnin’-varmint experiences and current speed-plates competitions are separated by decades, those early, runnin’ jackrabbit lessons return huge dividends in Steel Challenge competitions forty years later.
Competition being the best acid-test of equipment, the types of sights most successful in various shooting competitions accurately reflect the strengths and weaknesses of each type. For example, the fastest times of all classes in action-pistol competitions are usually posted with non-magnifying red-dot optics since they reduce iron sights’ three focal points to a one-dimensional ‘picture’. Also, optical sights eliminate the optical illusion inherent with iron sights where point of impact on target is affected by the angle and intensity of light illuminating the sights and target.
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AirNGasman, thank you for posting that book excerpt. The effects of light intensity and angle are of great interest to me, since I prefer open sights but have both astigmatism and cataracts, and they behave differently on different days.
The pistol sights (a PB with standard blade front and notch rear, and a P3 with fiber optic sights) are the hardest to deal with, but the air rifles also can be troublesome. One has post and notch, another one has post and rear peep, and another is presently scoped but has been shot more using the standard open sights than with the scope. The peep sight has been easier to use than either of the other nonmagnified aids.
One thing I tried, space and conditions permitting, was to move myself to a different angle relative to the sun and the target. This has helped a lot, and the comment in the quoted text about the policeman's experience totally fits.
Regarding pest shooting with open sights, I agree. Pest removal has just become more important here, and shooting with the peep sighted gun was faster and simpler than using the scoped rifle.
The pistol sights (a PB with standard blade front and notch rear, and a P3 with fiber optic sights) are the hardest to deal with, but the air rifles also can be troublesome. One has post and notch, another one has post and rear peep, and another is presently scoped but has been shot more using the standard open sights than with the scope. The peep sight has been easier to use than either of the other nonmagnified aids.
One thing I tried, space and conditions permitting, was to move myself to a different angle relative to the sun and the target. This has helped a lot, and the comment in the quoted text about the policeman's experience totally fits.
Regarding pest shooting with open sights, I agree. Pest removal has just become more important here, and shooting with the peep sighted gun was faster and simpler than using the scoped rifle.
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I love red dots, they work well on both my wildcat compact and my EDC I have no issues printing quarter size groups out to 50+yards with the one on my Wildcat
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