Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters eyes are shot! need sight help

ok im at the age ( 44 ) i have always worn glasses (contacts for 30 years)nearsightedness with a sitmatism. i recently started wearing reading instead of going to bifocal contacts and have been getting along great til i .....tried to shoot my deer hunting shotgun with rifle sights . i cant seem to get the rear sight focused with the front. dont really want to go to a scoep cause all i use this for is driving deer. any thoughts? i have thought about either the burris speed dot or the halo sight. any other sights? would fiber optic iron sights help? thanks i dont mind gettn older but hate this eye change thing

I'd cheer up and try some good Fiber Optics, before going much further down doom and gloom alley.

A friend let me try some of his, and they are REMARKABLE.

Good Luck !

GTC

Fiber optic sights really help. Especially good is a fiber optic front sight and an aperture rear sight.

Only 44?? Gee, wait until you're 67 like me!

Yeah, presbyopia happens to all of us in our mid-40s. That rear sight gets farther and farther out of focus, and there just isn't much that can be done about the eye itself.

Rear aperture sights make a huge difference.

For temporary situations, such as target shooting with handguns, you can make a little aperture with black electrical tape, and stick it to the front of your glasses over your dominant eye. It pops everything into focus. Something about 1/8" or a little larger seems to be about right.

Other than that, your potential answers are scopes and red dots. (Or you can hope for cataract surgery and a lens replacement._

Aperture sights....solve many mysteries for many years. Red dots are fun too.

Fiber Optic sights are nice. Big Aperture Ghost Ring sights are helpful too. Blade and ramp sights are a pain in the neck.

I had a Burris Speed Dot and it worked but depending on the setting,it was still blurry...

I just recently had laser surgery on my right(shooting eye)because the cross hairs were blurry at 100 yards out of a Leupold.....I have not tried it recently but my eye sight is better without glasses.

I have fought this for many years and my heart goes out to you and a solution.

Jayco

The above is the most economical choice and a very good one. What works better for me is one of the little Burris, Optima, or Trijicon red dots. They commonly are offered with a 4 moa dot. They do stick out much more than a ghost sight or peep and front bead type sight but you can also get a small metal "rabbit ear" frame for protection-- the red dot sits in this frame.

Brownells is a good source with the most to choose from.

When your eyesight is really shot,fiber optics blur also.I have fiber optics on my 45-70 Guide Gun and 45 ACP and they were no help to my eyes..Better than standard but no fix for really bad eyes.

Jayco

Have exactly the same eye problems as you. After 30 years of contacts quit wearing them last year because it's too hard to manage them when in the field and eyes dry with age, making contact lenses progressively more uncomfortable.

I've found 2 types of solutions that work very well to make iron sights sharply visible again:
1) With contacts -
a) soft contact lenses that correct for both myopia and astigmatism. There have been great technical advances recently that allow perfect correction of both problems with softs. You can have either dual vision correction - near vision one eye (usually dominant eye for shooting) - and far vision for the other eye. This gets rid of need for reading glasses. Some significant down sides for me were the need for care of contacts, tedious period of finding the right correction and type of lens, and problems with visual acuity at dusk - big problem in the brush for me. I could never work through this visual acuity problem so gave up on this solution. To make this work you need to have sufficient ability left to accommodate for far and near vision quickly and doesn't work for everyone.
b) A second solution involving contacts is bilateral eye far vision correction that allows great focus of front sight, rear sight, and target, but still requires reading glasses.


2) Progressive (no-line) eyeglasses - Mine are ground to provide excellent focus between 24 and 48 inches which lets me see pistol, and rifle, rear and front sights in perfect focus, through the lower part of the lens. I don't know whether this type of focal distance correction is routine, but I discussed with my optometrist my need for perfect visual acuity at the distances I needed for iron sights before he wrote the eyeglass prescription. The angle of the head when shooting places the eyeglass lens in a position for me that allows me to see the target in focus. You'll probably want to discuss all of this, as well as your specific needs, with your provider for professional advice.

I'm so satisfied with the results with my progressive eyeglass lenses that I have now taken scopes off some of my heavier caliber DGRs in favor of irons. I was never able to do so with my rigid GS contacts and had given up on all open sights and only occasionally used a peep.

There are attachments you can place on your dominant eyeglass lens that act as a diaphragm and sharpen the focus of the sights. While this works on the target range, I've not found it a practical solution in the field while hunting. Hope this helps.