Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Seeing targets in low light

It's below zero out today and it isn't going to warm up for a while -- I'm bored.
I have some targets set up at the end of my gun room about 40 feet away from where I stood. There are bright lights between where I was standing and the targets. I was standing in a well-lit area too. The targets are not lit up.
I did tests on a dozen scopes. A couple of the older scopes were not high dollar scopes. Most of the scopes were fixed power, because that is what I like. The highest power fixed scope I tested was 6x. The variables were set on the lowest power setting. I have some expensive - at least my definition of expensive - on rifles in my safe. I think I'll pull them out and do further testing.

I did the same test with iron sights. Perhaps the easiest to see with the iron sights were the sights I have on my 375 Winchester. It has an aperture rear sight and a brass post. All but the 375 have factory front sights. (I think I'll be replacing the factory front sights on rifles that I use for hunting, with brass posts). I have one rifle with a not so good open rear sight that had a white dot/top on the front sight. Most of the rest of the rifles have aperture rear sights. The exception is my T-C Muzzle loader. I tossed the miserable buckhorn sight that came with the muzzle loader long ago. I replaced that sight with a flat rear open sight with an opening wide enough to allow light between the edges of the front sight; this set up came in an easy second, almost tied with first. The large opening aperture rear sights did a little better than the other open rear sight with the white dot front post. The small aperture sights and the dark factory front sights were not good, with my old eyes.

The best sights I have every used for low light were on my FAIR express rifle in 6.5X55.
They are fibre optic, two green dots on the back leaf, and a red one on the front blade IIRC.
A friend just put danged near the same sights on his Winchester 94.
For apertures , I always to the rear insert out and sighted through the big hole.
When shooting indoor smallbore matches , the firing line is generally dark with the the targets being lit up - not the same as hunting for sure.
Cat

Seeing targets in low light requires me to use the largest objective I can get and still be within my rifle's over-all-weight limit.

Best scope I have for low light situations is a cheapy old Bushnell Banner Dawn to Dusk which is
maddening that it was around $100 at the time and it out performs my scopes costing many
hundreds of dollars in low light.

My solution to the crappy TC barrel sights is a Skinner blade, either bare brass or steel painted orange, and the Williams WGOS at the rear with a aperture insert in place of the blade. Beads don’t work well for me any more, and frankly never worked all that great when aiming with the top.

I think your testing methodology is flawed. Your eyes adapt to dark after about 30 minutes, that's why if you're hunting near dusk you'll notice that a bit after dark things seem to get brighter. That's your "night vision" kicking in where your eyes adapt to the dark and the twilight photoreceptors in your eyes (called rods) take over from the daylight photoreceptors (called cones). Some animals like cats have a lot more rods in their eyes which is why they see much better at night than we do.

They way you're doing your test your eyes aren't night adapted so you're not getting a good idea of what you'll really see through the scopes or with the open sights in low light. You'd get a better idea if you do your test outside on a night with a partial moon. Sit outside for about 30 minutes to let your eyes adjust before doing it. Hard to do when it's zero degrees outside, I know.

Maybe it is flawed.

But it was a comparison. I noticed on some scopes that there was light coming in that caused some “clouding”. That is while I could see the target it was sort of like looking at the targets through different degrees of fog. The best scopes showed no fog while the older scopes showed varying degrees of fog. I suspect that might be like looking at a deer in the woods to the west at near sunset or looking at deer to the east in the dark woods at dawn.

I have done similar tests out side near sunset. The targets at my range are east of my benches. But those tests were years ago. I had forgot some of the findings and I probably had different scopes.

As far as iron sights go, I don’t remember doing such tests previously. But I think that it might have shown which the order of “best to worst”.

After reading your reply, I think doing the tests on the iron sights might have been better if the entire room was dark.
I may redo the tests by dimming the lights. Dimming the lights with the scopes wouldn’t show the “fog effect”.