Took these 2 out shooting today. I learned that my eyes arn't what they use to be. Both shot nice at 50 yds. When I tried 100 things got a little difficult.

Send them my way.... I'll give them a try and get back to ya....

Both are nice rigs!

A trick my Old Man tried when his eyes started to south was to turn the rear sight around backwards on the barrel, putting it 4" or so closer to the front sight. He claimed it helped a lot by shortening the distance to the front sight. I don't know, I was young enough to think it kind of goofy but now it rings true. I still don't know if I want to try it. I did move the rear sight on my .45 Vincent-style Ohio Rifle forward a foot by cutting a new dovetail in the barrel 10 years ago- it does help but I'm scheming to put a tang sight of some sort on it.

Put a tang sight on the Savage BB or send it to me. Beautiful rifles.

Mike

I shot a coyote at 20 yards with the 250 BB that saddlering now owns and it was a major chore let me tell you.

Rookie here, whats a BB?

BB == Barrel Band

My first thought was "250 shot BB gun". What can I say.

The number of people I've hunted with is limited, but when I stop to think about it, I don't know anyone that actually hunts with a centerfire rifle using the original barrel-mounted leaf/notch/buckhorn sight. Savage, winchester, marlin, browning lever guns; Rem autos or pumps; and any bolt actions, whatever - if they use iron sights they have a receiver mounted peep, mostly Redfields or Williams.

Those that have left the original sight on are actually using scopes. Except do recall one cousin with an old tip-off (Weaver?) scope base on his Win 94, he may still have the barrel mounted open sight that gets used.

I know one guy, my main hunting pard, whose go-to rifle is a Marlin 336 .30-30 and who only uses its original factory sights. He gets his deer regularly. That speaks mainly to the kind of terrain we hunt in though.

I think open sights are under rated. When I was a kid that was all I used, albeit it was not on anything center fire. It took me some time getting used to peep sights, which I now have a fondness for. If you don't believe in the effectiveness of open sights then try shooting without anything.

Several years ago I had a now deceased friend that shot a Marlin 336 in 30-30 His name, not that it matters was Pat Rodrique and lived in the most northern town in NH., Pittsburg. BTW the Marlin was TOTALLY sightless. He was raised in Canada by the Abenaki Indians He never stood vertical when he hunted. Always bent over. I have never seen a hunter with his skill. We bought him a 1917 Enfield that was really nice. He always opted for the Marlin. No long shots. He always managed to get within bow shooting distance.

There is a difference between hunting and shooting.
I have always enjoyed hunting. Probably because I was raised by hunters. Lucky I am.
Your friend Pat was a hunter.

True, but still that is a good observation on a person's innate ability to shoot.

There was an old guy in the camp next to ours whose only gun was a disreputable looking M94 .30-30. Pop and I were hanging out there one day and the conversation came around to how and at what distance we sighted in our deer rifles. He had a smirk on his face when he stated he had never in 50 years sighted in his rifle- a complete waste of good shells, so he said. I picked up the rifle and noticed the rear sight was catty-wampus and the front sight definitely bent. Being the smartass I was I said "howinhell can you possibly hit anything with this?" He said if I gave him a cartridge or two he would show me, but again he wasn't about to waste ammo to prove a point. I went back to camp and scrounged up a handful of .30-30 shells and bade him to show us. I set up a couple empty beer cans over by the woods and he said "no good, make them move." Well, we couldn't get sustained movement on the cans so we scrounged a couple of old wooden croquet balls from under the porch and I heaved one out across the yard. Bang! Bang! Two shots and splinters flew. Two shots at an improvised cardboard target proved the sights to be off about a foot and a half at 50 feet. The geezer would've been just as well off without any sights- as long as the target was moving I guess. Oh, and there was always meat hanging off his game pole.

Dad and I went back to camp with our tails between our legs.

Another time, at the local shooting range a week or so before deer season, a guy blew into the parking lot in a cloud of dust, threw open the Caddy's trunk lid, grabbed a Marlin .30-30 and a big folded piece of cardboard. He unfolded the cardboard that was obviously a refrigerator carton and set it up on the 25 yard pistol range. We all stopped shooting to watch the show. He rapped out four or five shots as fast as he could work the lever (not having loaded the gun first!), walked down and inspected his target, and announced to one and all "that's good enough for me!" He walked up to the Cadillac, popped the trunk, and literally threw the rifle in and slammed it shut, and left the parking lot in another cloud of dust. This all took place within five minutes or less. Dumbfounded, we looked at each other and went over to remove the guys target. Those bullet holes were scattered, literally, all over that refrigerator carton.

Some people have Brillo pads for brains.

When I was in my teens a buddy of mine had a High Standard revolver that only he could hit anything with. When the rest of tried shooting it we all hit way to the left. We jokingly referred to it as Monty's "Low Standard." Since then I've lightened up and grown an appreciation for those who can shoot, and for High Standard handguns. But I still can't hit squat without using sights, even with my High Standard HD!.

Someone shot my Dad's 270 Mauser with Weaver 4X at a target and said "how do you hit anything with that". I don't remember his response. Probably didn't say anything but shrugged his shoulders. He didn't ever say much. I never knew him to miss a whitetail with any rifle. When he was a B-17 tail gunner he loaded his guns with straight armor piecing, no tracers. He got a Distinguished Flying Cross. When I asked what he got it for, he said for shooting down German fighters. When I asked him how many he shrugged his shoulders. I think he must have been the kind of natural shot this post is about. David

Awesome story!

I was priveledged to be part of a team that restored (in our spare time) the B-17F at the Museum of Flight in Seattle known as "The Boeing Bee" back in the late 90's.
I absolutlely love WW2 Army Airforce history.
The B17F did not have forward facing .50 caliber guns thus vulnerable to frontal attacks by German fighters early in the war. They were phased out or missions changed (Pacific Theater, bombing shipping) by 1943.

My father learned his trade working on Liberators and Flying Fortresses during WWII in the 8th Air Force. I grew up on stories about those bombers. Tail gunners did not have a high life expectancy in combat as they were often the first target of an attack from the rear.

Sportsdad, That is awesome. I toured a B-17 that belonged to the Confederate Air Force a number of years ago but they weren't letting people go back to the tail gunner's position. I wrote an article on my Dad's experiences that appears in the April 2016 issue of Military Magazine. The article left out some details. If Sportsdad and anyone else would like to read my draft of the article PM me an email address or use my email address that's posted below. I don't think it is appropriate to clutter up the forum with the article and I probably couldn't figure out how to post it any way. David

Tail gunner's postion was a lonely place to be, at 25,000 feet. I crawled back there from my waist position while joy riding in a B-25 last fall, and thought about how cramped and isolated I was.

My childhood best friend's father was a tail gunner in a B-24, "Witchcraft" (considered to be one of the "lucky" bombers in the bomb group), and he had an official certificate framed on the living room wall conferring upon him the title of "Ace" for having shot down five German fighter planes.

Personally, I think I would've taken my chances in a frozen fox hole rather than court death at 30,000 feet.

Rocky to Bullwinkle, while riding in a bathtub blown sky high: "Aren't you scared to be 10,000 feet up, Bullwinkle?" Bullwinkle: "Why no, Rock, it's the 10,000 feet down that scares me."

The 8th Air Force alone suffered more casualties in their 1942-45 heavy bombing campaign over Europe than did the Marine Corp in the Pacific.

Funny how my post about shooting some old rifles with open sights turned in to a post about the 8th Air Force. I'm in the Air Force by the way.

You're not a tail-gunner by chance...

And I guess you came by the "off topic" honestly. Thank you for tolerating our "flights of fancy."

nothing that exciting. Intelligence Analyst and powerpoint ranger

Sorry, I started the hijack. I thought my Father's apparent ability to shoot instinctively was pertinent. There is a book about the 8th Air Force called "Masters of the Air" by Donald Miller is an interesting read. David

I shoot my absolute best with a peep and a blade held at 6 o'clock. However they are not condusive to twilight or low light shooting.