You asked how to use a Buckhorn sight and here is the answer.
I have tried this and did not make it work very well.
Dixie Gun Works used to have several full Buckhorn sights that were high quality and different heights.
In 1892 A.C. Gould wrote on the poor quality of the buckhorn sight in his book “The Modern American Rifle.”
The idea was simple and observing the sight with its purpose in mind will make its utility obvious.
Unless you have some rare capability to judge the range to the animal, it would be convenient to have a sight that eliminates this main factor in making a kill shot from point blank range to the max effective range of your rifle. That device is the buckhorn sight.
In practice, the top of the horns are placed on the back of the animal and the bead is moved up to his belly and you squeeze the trigger. Zero the rifle so the bullet hits the critter above the bead just about where the heart resides. This works from where the animal fills the buckhorn (up close) all the way out to where you run out of effective range of the rifle and or sight picture. At some distant range, the trajectory starts to fall below the parameters of this scheme and while you could start holding the bead above the top of the horns to get a little more range, its probably not very practical.
The height of the buckhorn window must be calculated to fit the size of game intended to be hunted with a particular rifle and the position of the sight on the barrel is important as well. A little plane geometry math is required to establish the sight window height and the location of the sight along the barrel.
I hope this abbreviated explanation makes the case for a buckhorn sight on your old smoke pole rifle. Not of much importance on a rifle with a point blank range of 250 yards unless you intend to use it beyond the pbr. Hint, the faster the bullet, the shorter in height of the buckhorn.
In October of 1918, The Century Company published Townsend Whelen’s book, “The American Rifle.”
Whelen had this to say on the buckhorn sight:
“As before mentioned, the simplest form of rear sight is the plain open sight consisting of a bar having a “V” or “U” shaped notch. Fig. 44 shows one of the oldest forms of rear sights still frequently met with on hunting rifles. It is known as the “Buckhorn” sight because of the similarity of shape when viewed from the breech to a deer’s horns. It is not a good sight, and it is remarkable that it should have been so popular. The shape is such that it hides much of the target in aiming, and it is very difficult to get and keep the aim on running game with it. It is very hard to align the front sight evenly for elevation in the very small “V” notch at the bottom of the crotch.”
Whelen was not alone, Crossman and others were also writing in favor of the Lyman sights.
