What kind of accuracy can a person have with open sights at say 100yds with an inline BP rifle? Just wondering what every one else is averaging. I am getting about 3 to 4 inch groups. What are some tips or advise someone can give me to tighten that up. I am shooting off a front rest and a rear bag to sight in.

Thanks in advance

You're doing as good as any and better than most. Go kill something.

I have a helluva hard time drawing a fine bead with most issued factory irons. My hawken has a fine silver blade up front and a good buckhorn sight for a rear. A guy with good eyes can actually draw a very good sight picture with it to 100 yards easy. I'd suggest looking for options if still shooting factory sights.

This is as good as I can do with a flinter, offhand at 50. I hunt with full confidence.

3-4" groups @100 yards with open sight, yep, I'd take that. That's as good, or better, than I could do with any of my guns with open sights.

That is about what I get.Younger days a bit better

I'd say that is great for a muzzleloader. Might help a bit if one described his sight system and slugs used. Iron sight potential is MOA or slightly better if one follows the competition crowd. My muzzleloader won't do that (about softball sized groups with round balls), but I have an iron sighted Sharps 45-90 that has repeatedly done 3-shot moa groups at 100. Need to load some different slugs though before I stretch it out. One aspect that really helps is to find or create a target that precisely fits ones sight system such that the images can be precisely centered and replicated from shot to shot. One will need different dimensioned targets if he wants to reach a variety of extreme ranges.

With my Sharps and peeps in front and back, a 6-inch white bull's eye within a black background centers beautifully in the front peep with the narrowest of a black ring visible around the edges. It also helps that the rear is a tang sight making the sight plain 37 inches from front to rear. Minor deviations in alignment are quite noticeable across a span that long. If I was using a barrel mounted buck horn, I'd loose over a foot of that sight plain. Those peeps are great for targets, but I have to go with a rear peep and front post for hunting. The front peep just does not work for me in low light and with animals that come close to matching their background.

Briefly put, irons can be extremely accurate if they mesh well with ones target.

Considerable difference between open sights and what is typically meant by iron sights. With my MVA sight set up on my Shiloh #1 sporter in 40-70 SS and its best load it is consistently sub-MOA. I have a couple German single shot rifles with which I have fired the fluke sub-MOA group with open sights. I think that just proves the rifle is capable but the shooter isn't with the sights on the rifle. Generally those rifles will group around 2 inches at 100 yards with me shooting. With conventional open sights, in my instance a U notch rear and bead front, I consider anything between 3 and 4 inches pretty good and that includes my Gary White, Jaeger flinter, my Gun Works Hawken and the custom 45 Lancaster flinter hanging above the fireplace. An in-line should be just as capable though I've never owned or fired one.

A peep would perhaps tighten the group.

But peeps restrict dim light shooting unless it is a big ghost ring.

How is the trigger?

Another thing that may improve your groups is to remember to hold the MZ. It takes a while for the slug to leave the tube.

But 3 to 4 inches at 100 yards is pretty good in my book!

I have a Williams fp peep on my knight mk85 and firesight front. I shoot 460 no excuse bullets and it will shoot 1" easy at 100. Love the setup. I can shoot it better than with a scope honestly.

looks like I am doing ok. I have added a eabco peep sight to my cva. I am also looking for a new front sight globe with a cross hair insert. I will see if that helps any better.


Thanks for all the replys

"I am also looking for a new front sight globe with a cross hair insert. I will see if that helps any better."

That's gonna be about as useful as a side-saddle on a piss ant!!

If using a peep...concentrate on the front sight and target.

If using your vision correctly you will not see the front sight and target clearly at the same time! The eye cannot focus on two different locations at the same time therefore at shot break the front sight must be seen clearly and the bull or target will be a slight blur!!

Hopefully gnoah will notice this.

He has all kind of peep sight tips!

Like one has a choice to use one's vision correctly??????????????? Maybe now I will use my vision incorrectly??????

I said "concentrate" NOT focus.

Too many shooters try to center the peep.

The eye does that automatically.

Yes...you damn certain do HAVE a choice to USE your vision correctly...or incorrectly (which many people do) whether shooting barrel sights, aperture, or scope!

And as for shooters trying to center the 'peep'....that won't always happen unless the shooter is consistent with cheek/head placement (spot weld) on the comb of the stock!!

Id always shot irons wrong. Got a good lesson from a member on here concerning shooting my sharps and really concentrating on that front sight. The rear, whether peep or leaf is just to line up your sight to be able to see the front and it centers it on its own. If you get lazy and blurr out the front sight to see the target better, your accuracy will suffer. If you hone in on that front sight your groups will tighten considerably. I bought one of those spinning metal 22 targets and started shooting at 60 yds with irons. It amazed me that that little orange target was so easy to hit when you beared down and used that front sight.

Yup. Been there done that. Awesome on targets with good light. Can't see it at all in dim light. Don't like a globe for hunting. Restricts peripheral vision, and needs too much light.

Phoneman,

At least YOU have it right!

It is also very important to concentrate on the front sight on your pistolas, especially in fast happening situations. I hesitated to enter the pistola info on this thread.

yes it does, you get lax and in a hurry and your groups open up, but you concentrate and you can nail the bullseye. Lack of a better word its like you zone in and it almost points itself. Its hard to describe until you do it and you see that it works. With that 22 you can shoot 4 or 5 and almost get cocky and don't focus and you know you are gonna miss when you squeeze the trigger

I was shooting my Blackhawk hunter yesterday at 40yds are so. Anticipating recoil etc excuse excuse and I was all over the paper. Calmed down and put 12 in a spot about the size of my fist. Makes a difference. I think scopes are more of a handicap than a help. They make mediocre shooters be able to hit stuff. Almost immediate gratification but irons are more satisfying to me.

I shot a doe with my knight at 96 yards a few weeks ago with the Williams peep. I sighted 4" high at 100. I put the front sight on the point where the back of front leg met the body. Put the bullet right through the lungs. Im taking the same rifle to NM in dec after an elk. Ive got my target knobs on the way for my Williams. Planning to mark sight at 100, 150 and 200 for 4" high so no matter what I range the animal I can place the front sight in same place. No Kentucky windage or Tennessee elevation.

Good shooting ,Phoneman.....sounds like you have it dialed in.

What would one expect from a Phoneman?

I run a rear peep and I am about to change out my front sight from the fiber optic on the right to the set up with the crosshair on the left.

https://imgur.com/bOAemsG

3 to 4 inches is dead game year in and year out, when I went to the builders place to pick up my newly built J&S style 58 cal Hawken rifle, the builder had two red clay birds sitting on a hillside, on 50 the other 75 yards away, he told me the load the rifle had the sights filed for and handed me his bag, I loaded my new rifle with 140 gr FFG blackpowder and a .570" patched round ball.

I set the rifle in my hand and rested it on a bag, with the rear of the rifle shouldered I shot and busted the 50 yard bird, reloaded the rifle and did the same with the 75 yard bird, paid the man for the rifle, went home the next day, reloaded the rifle and hit three for three of my own orange clay birds at a full 100 yards, the sights are filed in a way that you put the target right on top of the front sight, that things deadly accurate to 125 yards with worry of holdover.

OUTFUGGINSTANDING!!

Not muzzle loaders but the same thing should apply....Most rimfire position shooters compete with both scopes and iron sights...in fact you can use open sights in the "any sight" (scoped typically) matches.
I did such a thing before I could afford a scope. My scores were maybe 2% better scoped than iron sighted. More dependent on the many other factors like fatigue, nutrition, solunar tables and voodoo hexes.
Excellent shooting conditions indoors Winter or outside Summer really makes the scores pretty close usually a matter of Xs to win.
Extra status to beat a few scoped shooters with your one and only (iron sighted) match gun!

Thanks Sharpsman, guessing a clay bird is around 3 inches, so I'm shooting right with the OP, what got me is how accurate and consistent these round ball guns are with Black Powder, that stuff doesn't take a back seat to any powder, we all know with our Sharps rifles mid to low single digit extreme spreads are the norm, smokeless powders cant even invent a dream to try and approach that level of consistency.

Years back in the 1970s I built a .54cal chunk gun. It had a 48" long Bill Large [ famous barrel maker and chunk gun shooter of yester year ] barrel, 1 1/4 across the flats. You had to shoot open iron sights and the matches where shot at 60yds, laying on the ground with a chunk of a log you'd rest the barrel on. We'd shoot at a X and the closest to the center won. Just about everyone would use a spotter - a piece of paper you'd sight in on and could move around on the target to get centered on the X. I ask Bill what kind of sights I should use. He said a partridge rear sight with a .100 notch in it. I could then use a 3X5 menu card as a sighter. It would just fit in the rear notch. He said to make the front sight a hair smaller than the menu card. Keep everything lined up on top.This way it was like a peep sight. He also cherried out a .535 RB mold to .545. I had to start the ball with a small hammer. That gun would lay one RB on top of the other. I won some matches but was more of a pistol shooter at the time so I sold it to a fellow here in Michigan. I saw him about 3 years latter and he claimed he won a couple of Michigan chunk gun matches. I believe a big part of it was the sights. You need the right sights for what you're doing. Must be why when I aged and had trouble seeing the sights I went to Trade Gun matches - flintlock smooth bore - where no rear sight is allowed. Now that I'm just a old fart it's shotguns and if I want to shoot a rifle it's with a piece of tape with a small hole in it on my glasses [ to clear up the sights ]. Works great on my 43 Spanish Remington rolling block.