I am curious if anyone has hunted/does hunt a deer or deer-seized critter with military rifle, without a scope, with battle sights. I know many WW2 vets hunted with battle sights. Where I was born and raised (the other side of Atlantic), Mosin 7.62x54 is the ultimate hunting rifle for anything from mountain goat and boar to brown bear. They don't have any scopes. I am itching to take ine of my mausers or M44 carbine. I only wish the gun season was longer here. It is only 2 weeks in PA...

Killed two deer in the past several years with WWII battle rifles and their original sights: VZ 24 and a US Rem 03.

Neither of the former owners had any problems killing deer with either rifle over the previous 50 years. The VZ belonged to my dad (war trophy), the O3 belonged to one of his brothers.

I killed my biggest deer ever, a 140 class 8 point, with a 1943 K98 with iron sights this past year. It was at about 125 yards and it was easy.

I've never hunted big game with a rifle that did not have a scope. However, I've killed many a squirrel and rabbit using iron sights. People used rifles to hunt successfully for about two hundred years before scopes were common. Don't see why, if you practice to become competent, you couldn't do it today.

KC

I've killed several deer with an 03A3 with issue sights. No problem for me up to 200 yes. It is now because my eyes are not what they were. Most old folks eyes aren't.

Still find a 30 carbine handy on a four wheeler chasing hogs. Don't want to get a good rifle mucked up in the mud and brush but still want something that will work everytime.

BCR

Never used anything really old. My cousin used a Moisin Nagant for years though.

I've used M1A and AR15 a fair amount and have used the MN for hogs.

I haven't used battle sights, but I have been carrying a Marlin 1894 in 44 mag with a Williams peep, and its minute of deer out to 100 yards. Which has been plenty good in the rotten thick brush I have hunted the past two seasons.

Lee Enfield 303 Brit with original mil sights gets out and about the hunting fields each year.

I've killed a few dozen deer with various military rifles ('98 Mausers, '95 Mausers, '94 Swede Mausers, and .30 Carbine). They work as well as any open sight rifle at reasonable range, but the sights tend to be a bit less refined with rather thick front blades.

The best example I know of was a member of our hunting club. He served in Korea and purchased a Garand through the NRA in the mid-50's because, "I used it in the war and it just seemed to hit harder on men than a .30-30 did on deer.....figured deer and men are about the same size so it ought to work for hunting too."

From about 1955 until 2002 (when he died) this was his only deer rifle. Carried it in a dashboard rifle rack in his 1950's vintage jeep and both the rifle and jeep looked like they never got cleaned.....but both always worked. That hunter took probably 65 deer in the 45 years he carried that Garand, so yeah, I'd say a military rifle would do quite well!!

until my eyes went, I was 'irons only'. Now I have a scope on every deer rifle.

Not military, but I use two rifles a lot during the season, both are levers equipped with receiver sights.

TexasRick:

The only rifle with iron sights that I really like are those on an M14. I suspect that the sites on a Garand are about the same. But my eyes are also getting old and I no longer can focus on the rear sight. So now even my rim fires have scopes.

KC

My girlfriend took her one and only deer, a 220 pound 10 point with an old .222 with iron sights. I think the distance was 40-50 yards or so, it didn't run very far. Quite a first! Not a military rifle although

I have iron sights on a M98 35 Whelen and sevral other rifles.

Adds a little challenge if you are 62.

Have not used a mauser or M44, but I have taken plenty of deer with iron sights - Enfield, Cetme, and SKS come to mind. Here's a story -

I took my 3rd and 4th deer in 1997 with a Chinese made SKS using semi jacketed lead point ammo made in Germany and China respectively. Those bullets cost 9 cents each. On the opening day of NY�s southern zone regular deer season I had a tag for one antlered deer and one antlerless deer. I left my home before dawn and decided to hunt just a few hundred yards behind the house as the sun rose. I was hoping to catch deer passing along a deer trail that linked feeding and bedding areas. I stood between two maple trees leaning against the down hill tree and hoping that the other would block me from the sight of any deer uphill on the trail. The sun rose behind me turning the dark to grey and tingeing the sky with pink. I heard fat grey squirrels come down from their nests to search the fallen leaves for acorns and watched them play. One worked his way toward me, climbed a tree about 5 yards away and ran along a branch a few yards over head and into the tree I was leaning against. I saw a partridge hen fly down and feed through my field of vision. Both moved off to my left. My plan was to watch this trail during sunrise, then slowly work my way uphill and southward in an attempt to drive deer to my hunting companions if I didn�t see any. As the morning wore on I continued to hear the squirrels and partridge off to my left but paid little attention as I had seen the small animals already. But when I decided to move I worked my way in that direction walking quietly and cautiously along over the stone wall and from rock to rock to minimize the noise of my foot steps. I had travelled about 50 yards when I heard footsteps ahead of me. Well I thought � it�s waaaay too noisy to be deer but I�ll take a look to see what it is.

Peering down hill I saw not one, but TWO deer. The fork horned buck was following tight behind a doe. He must have heard, smelled, or sensed me because he looked back over his shoulder just as I settled the SKS�s hooded front site post into the V notch of the rear sight on his shoulders. They were +/- 70 yards away from me and about 20 feet down slope. The buck swung his head forward and launched himself into a bound that should have carried him safely out of sight safely behind thick brush � except that his lady friend was squarely in front of his chest mere inches away. He rebounded off her butt and twisted sideways bringing his front shoulder out of alignment with her hind quarters. That was the opening I had been waiting for. She was no longer in the bullet�s path. I sent the 123 grain projectile high into his left side, just over his heart. The bullet angled down and through the offside leg at the elbow.

Stunned by the noise and impact of the buck from behind, the doe wasn�t sure what was going on. I let her go. Somehow it just seemed greedy to drop them both. The buck fell about 5 yards away and was still breathing when I walked up to him for the coup de grace.

On the last day of the same season. I hunted up to the top of the hill and on to the adjacent property. I had attempted stalks on deer bedding at the top of the hill several times since opening morning without success. Each time they went down the hill on the far side as I approached and into thick pines where I could not see them. This time I followed them after I jumped them and tracked them into a stand of pines too thick for me to crawl through. I gambled that they were still in the thick growth and circled the grove to wait for them to emerge. I took a position inside a group of tall straight hardwood trees. It was a park like setting without undergrowth so from behind a large tree 50 yards away I had an unobstructed view of the pine thicket.

I waited patiently. I waited impatiently. I counted all 317 trees within sight. And then I waited longer.

Finally three does emerged from the pines and fed into view browsing on low growth just 50 yards away through the hardwoods. It was the last day of the season and I had a doe tag to fill. Which one should I take? I resolved to take the first one that offered an unobstructed shot. They fed bunched up for several yards until at about 75 yards one of them stepped away from the others offering the opportunity to squeeze a shot between two trees and through her heart. At the sound of the shot she leapt into the air and hit the ground dead. She folded on the spot with the single shot entering through the near side (knocking out an inch sized chunk of rib), then passed through the heart and exited between the ribs of the far side. She collapsed so suddenly that the other does looked at her curiously but did not flee until I began to walk toward them and shooed them away.

When I dressed the doe I found that the bullet had passed cleanly through her heat and the chunk of rib had slashed through the center of the heart horizontally cutting through all four chambers. When I opened her chest cavity warm blood literally poured out. Before I had finished field dressing her a rustle in the leaves and movement caught my eye as a snow white ermine flowed over the brown leaves like liquid silk drawn to the scent of blood. The little carnivore came within 5 yards before it spotted me, reversed direction and disappeared like white furred lightening. That was a very special moment. I felt like I had been visited by a woodland nymph. The memory is even more special because those stately park-like hardwoods were logged off the next spring. I probably had the last hunt of anyone in those old trees.

The SKS with iron sites certainly proved itself as a capable deer rifle with that double harvest season.

a mk4 #1 smle with winchesters 180 pp load did well for the youngest and i on an antlerless hunt a couple of years ago in bad rainy weather...

it was the only rifle we had that we wished to take out in the weather that day...

I've killed a few bucks with irons. Have a specialized, custom sighted, heavy cover elk rifle with irons. I still hunt small game, especially squirrels, with iron sighted guns.
The military rifles I've played with can have anything from very good irons, that means easily seen and used, to some really bad, that means hard to see and use. If I were to consider hunting with one, I'd consider that first. You must be able to clearly see both the sights and the target.
If I had a fine old classic military rifle that I want to hunt, I'd serious look for something that I could add w/o reducing it's worth. Alot of my shooting friends put pistol or scout type scopes on their Mauser with the mounts that fit into the rear sight for that reason. Those setups shoot alot better than you'd think. E

I hunt a lot with iron sights, mostly on big bore rifles but also with my 25-35 SRC, 30-30 SRC and my Win. 95 SRC in 30-06..I hunted a bit with a milsurp Mauser in 7x57 as a kid growing up on a ranch in the Big Bend of Texas..I like iron sights up to 200 yards, then a scope is consideralby better IMO...

It has been 7 or 8 years since I carried Dad's 98 Mauser 8mm into the deer woods. I shot a few deer with it just as a novelty. The sights are too fuzzy now. Dad sent the rifle home during World II and when he returned to stateside he killed a lot of deer with it to feed his family. Later, in the 1950s he began using U.S. commercial rifles and never considered selling the old 98.

Not quite stock sights, but I've shot deer with a sporterized (by a previous owner) Krag with a Williams peep sight. I've toted a Garand hunting several times. I still think the Garand has fine handling and fine "as issued" sights.

Speaking of irons, for several years I've also used a Win 94 375 with a Williams peep sight that I nicknamed first "the flying Winchester" for its quickness and later "Charlie Brown" for the luck I had with it. I saw and/or shot at my best deer with it but never connected. I was really down after missing both a doe and nice buck; the next week the front sight fell out on the way to the lease!

I'm with the guy that said"I did until my eyes went". I shot a doe in a group of feeding doe that was already limping. Looked like a doe to me with out a scope. Turned out to be a buck,could not make it out clear enough through the snow and distance. Enjoy Iron sights while you are young.

I carried a K-31 a few years back but never had a shot while it was in my hands. My partners were punched out so I decided to switch rifles to my M700 so as not to limit myself. Killed a 3x4 the next day at probably 80yds. Still haven't blooded the Swiss.

I have never hunted with open sights until the last couple of years, and I killed a couple of hogs last year with my Blaser R-93 308 Tracker barrel. This year, I killed a couple of does with my R-93 9.3x62 Tracker barrel.

I still hunt with my Winchester 1894s and my Marlin 1893 with iron sights. I refuse to put an optical sight of any kind on them. All but the .25-35 1894 and the .25-36 1893 have tang sights which suit my aging yes better than the factory sights. The .25s are saddle guns used for lion hunting where shots are never more than 25-35 yards at the most.

Used a model 700 ADL in 30-06 for first 4 years before I got a scope.Killed a few deer and a few other critters.I think it was either my 16th or 17th birthday my dad bought me a scope for it,many moons ago.

retrieverman.... thats a horribly short sight radius.... what gives there? Scout scope for other times to move the sight that far forward? I'd have thought a peep around the rear scope base area would be much more forgiving and quicker to use accurately.

Looks like it works fine though.

KC.. the sights on the M14 and M1 are not similar, they are exactly the same.... grins.... good glasses can keep you shooting irons almost forever but most folks don't want to do it that way.

That is the way Blaser puts the sights on their "Tracker" length barrels, and it hasn't been a problem. I shoot this barrel quite a bit with a scope in a QD mount, and it fits nicely behind the rear sight.

I hunt deer with irons frequently when it's raining out, I find it easier than any of the systems I've tried for keeping scope lenses clear in the rain. My most common rainy day rifle is a "jackknife sporterized" Swedish Mauser with a Williams receiver sight. The other is a 99 Savage .303 with a tang sight. Both work pretty well. I've killed caribou with the Savage as well. When I was a kid, living in a shotgun only area, I killed deer with an Ithaca 16 gauge pump with nothing but the front bead. It wasn't that unusual to see people doing that in those days. It was probably more common than slug guns with sights on them. A friend's young daughter needed a small, easy shooting rifle to start deer hunting with, I gave her an open-sighted 92 Winchester SRC I had around and some 1100 fps cast bullet handloads. She killed deer with it for a few years until she got bigger and her dad got her a .243.

Killed a couple deer with iron sights, both does. One with a .358 BLR and one with a 1904 Winchester .32 WCF.

There is nothing like the VISUALS of a deer going ass over teakettle, when you can see the whole thing!

That said, I love scopes. I'm glad smart people figured out how to put everything on the same focal plane, with a crosshair no less.

For here, in W. Oregon, the ranges can be close, the action fast, and you can count on the rain. I've found my scope to be a hindrance and have pulled it and gone to an XS Sight System, Ghost Ring and put a flo. orange dot at the bottom of the post for fast acquisition,, just like the flo. orange dot on my Rem 870. This sits atop my Rem pump, '06 carbine. It's point and click,, just like my recurve bow. At these ranges, MOA is not an issue.

p.s... It'll group in the 2" bull at 100 yds, with a good rest, even with my blurry vision only able to approximate the target.. and that's with the wide-open aperature.

Good shootin',, Ken

do it while you can. the time will come when the eyes wont allow it.

I have never have hunted big game with irons, but hopefully soon I will. I like to be a little different, which is why I hunt with Ruger #1s. My wife gave me a Ruger left-handed bolt in .270 Win. many years ago. Great rifle, but other than the bolt on the south side there's nothing different about it. So, I'm going to have a front sight attached and try clamping on a NECG peep to see what I can do. The XS set up looks nice, but I want the option of just un-clamping and re-installing my 6x Leupy if need be. Tags are few and far between in AZ, so I'll start with javelina and play the rest by ear.

Deer hunting with iron sights,

That's all I have ever hunted with. I don't shoot past 100 yards neither. A long shot 'round these parts is 75 yards. All but one deer was ay 70 yards rest were under 30 yards. I've been deer hunting since I was 12 and 'am 59 now. I've killed lots of deer in them years.
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If you correct for the vision to shoot irons, its gonna typically be a LONG time before you can't... like more or less in the late 70s or early 80s.

Shot my very first deer last fall with a Benelli M2 Tactical with iron sights and a bulk pack Winchester 12 ga. rifled slug.

It's an experience I will remember always.

I used irons for years, on 22's squirrel hunting, and on a 54ML they work. Now I pretty much use a scope, unfortunately my eyes haven't held up as well as the rifles did. I still use them on pistols, but that has gotten to be a problem.

One of the things I really like about iron sights is how nice and trim the rifle feels. Especially while doing a walk around hunt. There are times that a scoped rifle will work better, low light, alfalfa or wheat fields etc. In the river bottoms filled with pucker brush, I do not see a down side to iron sights.
It's also kind of difficult to scope my older mannlichers as I do not want to be the one that drilled holes in them. This gives me incentive to really like iron sights.

99 savage in 3030 tang sight, works fine on texas deer

The notion that anybody older than (fill in the age) can;t use iron sights is open to question. I am 57 and use iron sights regularly for all sorts of hunting. My wife didn't start using them until just a few years ago, and is becoming quite competent.

One common misconception about iron sights is that they can't be used when the rear sight becomes fuzzy to our eyes. But if the notch is big enough to show light around the front sight, then quite accurate shooting can be done, even on small targets. An aperture sight makes this easier, but an open rear is still useable when fuzzy.

One reason many people give up on irons after using scopes for years is they try to use irons on a scope-type paper target--and they can't see the bullseye well enough. They then blame the sights, when the target is all wrong.

Put up a target with a big enough bullseye that contrasts with the background, and irons can suddenly become useable, even for older shooters. Many bullseyes on today's scope targets are too pale, because shooters want to see the holes in the bullseye. Instead, an iron-sight target should be either very dark or (especially with pale front sights like the common bead) white on a dark background.

Blue sheets of construction paper are perfect.

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.