Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Hi-Vis Glow sights - Not for the purest - but interested in trying some - Advice?

Ok Guys

My eyes are a problem - and I have to replace some sight on my 300 savage

What do you think about these - anyone want to admit trying them:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Savage-99-B...-Fiber-Optic-Sight-Set-NEW-/121728420058

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Savage-99-Bulls-Eye-Green-Fiber-Optic-Sight-Set-NEW/111769611323

Thanks in advance
Chris

Looks like the rear sight might be taller than what you have and I don't see a height listed for the front.

The front sights are nice and bright and very visible but they cover up a lot of your aiming point. Very well suited for handguns at shorter ranges but the jury is still out as to how good they are at 100 yards and beyond when working with rifles. If you use them with a 6:00 hold they may well work for you.

Have you tried shooting something with regular old peep sights? I was surprised how well I could see Gnoahhh"s tang sight. I hadn't shot my M1 or 03 in so long I had forgotten what it was like. My eyes are about shot too. I'm at a point where I have to watch for the deer with my glasses on, and then slide them up on my head to see through the scope, or the scope is blurry, Joe.

Being a purist, relatively speaking, I like putting sighting equipment on a rifle that was available when it was made, or at least fairly soon after it was made. That is why I would never put a glow in the dark sight on a vintage Savage lever gun. They do work pretty good though.

I have installed Williams firesite end sight on my 358f. I use it with a regular peep and this set up works great for me. My eyes can pick this combination up extremely fast. I now have this set up on most of my hunting guns. The high visibility sites practically glow in the dark.

Keep the aperture close to the eye.

Best advice yet.

I'd really like to try this one, but in red

Reference Steelhead's advice re: aperture as close to your eye as possible. Those silly apertures way up on the barrel don't work as well as one back in front of your eye. Your eye will try to focus on it instead of look through it and utilize it subconsciously. It'll slow you down if you have to take a snap shot. Plus, a sight picture like the one illustrated will block out a fair amount of the target. IMO it is a system designed to help the guy who made it by fattening his wallet, not the guy who tries to use it in the deer woods. The bright front sight has merit though.

Yep, you still have 2 focus points with it on the barrel, no different than the standard open sights the OP has now.

Bring the hole to the eye and only worry about the front.

No argument here Scott. Peeps work best the way you explain it.

Why not go with a scope?

If not a scope then you could try a Redfield sourdough blade with a brass insert. The insert is at the top of the post and is intended to catch the light. A little more exotic would be a King Reflector sight. They replace the front sight and have a little reflective mirror in their base. I came across a 99 with one some time ago but have never shot one and can't tell you how well they work.

PS - with a post front sight and a peep rear you use a six o'clock hold. You center the front sight on your target with a bead front sight. As said before, your mind pretty much automatically puts the front blade in the center of the peep.

If you actually need the fiber optic type sights, do yourself a favor and install the Williams Firesights. The one's you've been looking at have an unsupported fiberoptic in the front sight, and the first time you whack it on something when it's cold, it will be laying on the ground at your feet, and you'll be looking for your backup rifle. Ask me how I know...

http://www.williamsgunsight.com/gunsights/image_d.htm

They also make a peep set up with a fiberoptic front sight..


http://www.williamsgunsight.com/gunsights/image33.htm

Huh?? Of all my rifles, only a couple have flat post front sights. The rest are all beads. I haven't used the technique of blotting the target with a bead since I wised up at around age 12. Six o'clock holds work as well with a bead as with a post. I can see a bead being used to blot out the striking point of the bullet (point of impact being adjusted to fall behind the center of mass of the bead), but for that to work with surgical precision, the bead would have to be pretty tiny. A bead that small, to my mind, would be a handicap under less than ideal conditions in the deer woods- and let's face it, conditions are rarely ideal there. A large highly visible bead will get you on target quicker and more efficiently, but by using it you are sacrificing some accuracy when said bead is blocking out a bushel-sized portion of the target. Putting the bullet impact on top of the bead restores its viability in that respect, and also allows more precise bullet placement if circumstances require holding over because, again, you're not estimating the precise "Kentucky elevation" because the big old bead is blocking out those inches in between the point of aim and the intended landing spot of the bullet.

Germane to the discussion of apertures, and kind of about this discussion of front sight types, during the Schuetzen era 100+ years ago there was much debate among the competitors over which type of front sight was best for offhand work at 100 and 200 yards. Some guys favored an aperture front sight (as do 99.99% of target shooters today), some few persisted with what was called the pin head sight. The pin head was a tiny bead that exactly subtended the black bullseye when superimposed on it, and was mounted atop a thin wire post, all of which enclosed in a tunnel to block out overhead light. The idea was when the pin head perfectly blotted out the bullseye, you touched the set trigger and sent the bullet on its way. The famous barrel maker and champion offhand shot Harry M. Pope was the main proponent of that sight. In the end even he finally admitted the bead used like that was inferior. The reason: needing to concentrate/focus on two widely separated objects, the bead and the target, instead of just letting the brain subconsciously center an object in an aperture.

I should have clarified myself better. You can use a front blade anyway you want. For some reason using beads on a six o'clock hold within the round rear aperture has always bugged the crap out of me - but that's personal and not technical. My point on the Redfield sourdough blade was that it, like the posts you find on 1917s, 03s, 03A3s, M1s (carbines and Garands), and M14s were, as I understand it, were meant to be shot with a six o'clock hold - or even a deeper hold depending on the range and target. These are just my thoughts and they certainly do not represent hard fast rules by any long shot - sorry for the bad pun and confusion.