Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Mausers and Military Rifles Milsurp accurate shooting with age reality check

I like shooting milsurps but if I can't hit what I'm shooting at with it I don't want it. IMO a 1903 Springfield is way up there in quality of mfg, history and overall cool factors. I almost bought one yesterday. Fortunately I remembered those sights didn't work too well for me 15 years ago and my eyes haven't improved since then. Mauser barleycorn sights IMO are worse. I'm at the point where if it doesn't have receiver/peep sights like the 03A3, Garand, 30 Carbine, etc. or very good open sights like the 96 Swede I'm wasting my time and ammo.

Forgot the No4 Enfields.

I like shooting them as well. I also hear you about aging eyes. I have to shoot weak side when using irons of any kind. My left eye just does not work well. I'd pick a m1917 over a 1903 and I'd also take a regular ol VZ24 8mm mauser sights over the 1903. The m96 sights work well for me too. The extra sight radius doesn't hurt either. My preference is for a rear peep though. Not that a rear notch doesn't work, it just seems like the rear aperture makes it easier. Not necessarily more precise, just easier since your eye automatically centers on the peep. YMMV.. The last time I shot irons was with my SKS, a couple months ago:



It has an aftermarket insert for a rear peep sight. Works out very well. I was tagging a yote silhouette at 400 yards, so it works well enough. Even though that yote looks like a black blob at that distance to my eyes:


7 misses out of 20 shots:


I honestly don't know if I would have done any better with the m96:

That is an upgraded rear sight, but it shot very well with it's milsurp rear sight.

I think we can all agree, if we still have good enough eyes to use these sights they are fun as hell to shoot with. The M96 shown above has turned in some pretty precise groups in the past. A keeper for sure:



Eyes play a big part of putting bullets downrange on target. If you are lucky, you can correct some of that like I did. Switching to the right side was not too hard to do and worth it in the long run. It enables me to still shoot irons. Maybe not as well as I would have left handed, but it is what it is.

Can your eyesight be corrected with a surgery? Would corrective lenes help? Just questions I wonder about sometimes. In my case, those were not an option..

I had cataract surgery, amazing how much better I can see, couldn’t shoot iron sights at all before I had the surgery.

The ethics of slight modifications to milsurps has been debated endlessly, so can we skip that for now? A square needle file on almost any milsurp from any country, applied to the rear sight notch to allow light on either side of the front sight will increase sight picture precision greatly. A step further, if something resembling a Patridge front is filed, glued, soldered, pinned, or dovetailed to match the rear square notch...you WILL be able to shoot to the rifle's capability. I am damn sure no David Tubb, lol, and I am ringing steel often enough to keep me amused out to 600 yards with slightly modified sights on trapdoors, Martini's, Mannlicher's and Mausers. LOTS of light and a clear repeatable sight picture is the key IMO.

ALL my non-scoped shooting rifles have Aperture sights, OEM or aftermarket.

Tech-Sights for the .22 LR's and Mini-14, and NECG for the Rugers.

And, of course, the 03-A3 and M1 rifles.




GR

bsa 1917, I had one of those insert peep sights on my SKS and they do work pretty well. I wasn't shooting mine at 400 yards but could hit ten out of ten on a gong at 250 with it. I don't know about that "yote" target, looks more like a Lab to me, LOL. Whatever it is, to me trying shots like that with an SKS beats getting dialed in with a flat shooting round and a scope. IMO that many hits with that cartridge is good shooting.

flintlocke, Good idea on opening up the rear sight. I've got a Russian Capture K98 I might try that on. After what the Russians did to those that shouldn't effect it's value and I'm not going to sell it anyway.

hanco, I had cataract surgery a couple of years ago and it does help.

Thanks 43, yeah I agree with you on all accounts. The yote lost its ear about 8 months ago. Probably from guys like me that just shoot its head. It's really too big of a target for my scoped rifles, even though it's a full sized yote silhouette. Now if it were set at 800 yards, that would be much better.

Here's some better pictures of it when it looked more like a yote, when it had its ear intact:





Someone tried to weld the ear back on, but that did not last long. A target like that is fun to shoot at with iron sights though.

i have a 1898 Spr Armory in 30-40 Krag that has a rear sight tangent peep plate. the peep sight is really, really small!!!! i was either going to 1/16 or 1/8" drill bit, but lucky i purchased a Redfield 102K aperture sight from Ebay. i think it was $30 or $40 about 9 years ago. my groups are 1 1/4" - 1 3/4" at 100 yards (5 shots/ bench). one time (only once) she did go 3/4" at 100 yards. she has the accuracy, but the shooter (me) is blind as a bat .

i also have Redfield and Lyman aperture sights on my '91 Argentine Mauser, '98 German Mauser, Arisaka Type 99, M1 carbine and another one that escapes me. i have a Williams FP aperture in my Winchester m94.

when i was young and dumb, i enlisted in the US Army. the Army gave me a M16A2 with peep sights. me, being a hunter, did not know that the peep sights had so much accuracy in them. at 600 meters, i was able to hit a chest sized target.

https://www.ssfirearms.com/proddetail.asp?prod=K554

a cheap fix for peep sights on something you don't want damages , cut an eye off of a crimp on butt conector and clean it and site with a degreaser use super glue or a clear epoxie to attach . you can remove it with a bic liter . this has been a life saver for me with a bb gun & a pellet rifle

Nothing say's you cant scrounge up sights or parts of sights and alter them to be more compatible to you. Make the switch, doctor them to your heart's content, and save the original stuff in a baggie to go with the gun if you want to ever make it original again. Works for all manner of milsurp bolt guns and ex-Commie sheet metal wonders. Sights and their parts are all over eBay for cheap.

The pre-war M1903 is way superior in every way to the wartime "made in a hurry" 03A3's. Indeed, the sights are their weak point but there's ways to fix that (aside from fixing your eyes, like I did at age 70 by having cataract surgery). Snag a spare rear sight slide and open up the peep hole with whatever size drill bit works for you - make it as big as you please. Stick it in the sight ladder and go to town. Ditto the front sight: make or buy a 1/10" wide replacement blade and Bob's Your Uncle. Those improvements were done as a matter of course back in the day by discerning marksmen, and done a lot by Marine sharpshooters. Just look at the scores those fellas made at Camp Perry in the 20's-30's and get back to me. Then there's the legendary "Dad" Farr, an old timer in his 60's in 1922, who competed at Camp Perry with an issued '03 and set a record in the Wimbledon Cup Match for continuous 10's at 1000 yards (a ten inch circle) that stood for many years.

A half decent aperture sight is far more useful for me than a high quality aft barrel sight! I have a '98 Krag with a striker mounted aperture sight, far superior for me than the Model 1899 Krag tangent sight.

An '03A3 SC sporter I bought for just a bit more than the value of the 'minty' Lyman 48 Target sight it wore. Intent to part it out for the Lyman. Shot so well, decided to keep it despite amateurish conversion, with low-scope bolt handle appearing in dire need of Viagra!

Best!
John

Yes, those striker (cocking knob) mounted sights are a treat. I've had them on a couple rifles and having the aperture back close to the eye is a distinct advantage, much like a tang sight on a single shot. Some yokels vocalize that the striker doesn't return close enough to the same place with each cycling of the bolt for nth-degree accuracy but I never thought so, at least with my specimens. A couple old time custom gunsmiths recognized the possibility of that happening and cut notches in the strikers which nestled into corresponding V's ground onto the sears, to lock everything perfectly in alignment for shot-to-shot precision.

Therein lies another solution for a milsurp shooter who can't see issue sights anymore. (And again just put the original striker in a baggie with a note on it for posterity.) Nobody makes striker-mounted peep sights anymore but they appear on eBay with fair frequency - and if one is serious about his shooting, well....