Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Deer hunting with iron sights?

Yeah, they work very well, as does black--but it's harder to see bullet holes in black.

A gunsmith I know tapes small paper plates on black paper for testing iron-sighted rifles. It works.

In my humble opibion, after putting a few thousand rounds downrange with irons, the best sight for irons depends on the FRONT sight. For an ivory bead, the best target I ever used was a target Williams used to make 45 years ago. It had a 1 1/2 inch center cirle, surrounded by a 6 inch diamter black bull. With my old Springfiled, (DCM, $14.77 +S&H)it was no trick at all to shoot 1 1/2 inch groups.
For the Sourdough sight, which is a square topped post, with the top of the post angled back at 45 degrees and gold colored, a black square on a white background works well.
One thing to be cautious of when sighting in using iron sights is that sunlight coming in from either side can change your sight picture enough to change your point of impact. When shooting a match with M-14's, we would have to correct for that. I don't remember how much the correction was.

Fred

Fred,

I would tend to agree, but have always found the best front sight for hunting is pale, and most game animals are dark, the reason for suggesting a pale bull on a dark background.

I do tend to prefer beads for hunting over posts, and one thing I do is file the face of the bead flat, angling away from me. This vastly reduces the influence of sight-light, and gives a shiny bead an even glow, rather than a bright shine.

One of the best hunting front sights is a fiber-optic front bead. These are much easier to use on any kind of target as well.

I have never tried the fiber optic- No real good reason, just my usual anal retentive resistance to anything new.
Even though I found the ivory bead to be the easiest front sight for me to use, I went to the Sourdough after knocking several ivory beads loose.
I think some people might be surprised at just how far you can hit a woodchuck with a 24" barreled, iron sighted Springfield that is meticulously sighted in.

Fred

Oh, yeah!

As a matter of fact I once shot a large prairie dog through the chest with my first shot at 225 yards with a Winchester High Wall in .30-40 Krag with a tang aperture sight.

That was an UNLUCKY prairie dog!

HAH!

I disagree!
A good shot with iron sights on an accuarate rifle could hit a praire dog most of the time at 225 yards, I believe.
(Well, looking at from the dog's perspective, i guess any time you get shot is unlucky-)

Fred

Yeah, I could hit a big PD most of the time with that rifle, partly because it was a genuine 1" rifle at 100 yards with the aperture sight.

Now, little dogs would be tougher, but often I have trouble hitting them with a scoped rifle. And then there are the prairie dogs that apparently have a force-field surrounding them....

I personally believe that a scope has many advantages to iron sights. Like many people my eyes dont focus well on iron sights. The problem is that when looking through iron sights your eyes trying to work on several focal planes ( front sight, rear sight and target). A scope of low magnification at close range is actually faster to acquire in my opinion. Like many things though what works best for one doesnt always for another.