How far to shoot without a scope?
Question:
> I was given a gift of a .308 lever action rifle (it must be over twenty years > old, but in great condition) and I plan to hunt with it this season. The gun > has no scope and area I hunt is densely wooded, offering no shot over 50 – 60 > yards, so I hope I can get by with the gun’s sights.
It appears that the open sights on the gun and your eyes aren’t completely cooperating. I don’t think you need a scope, but you might consider getting a peep sight for your rifle. Williams Sight Co, Marble’s and others make affordable peeps for most models of rifles. You might want to check out Brownell’s as a good source of peeps, too. >From my own experience with a peep sighted .30-30, I could reliably keep a bullet
within a 4" circle at 150 yards (from a sitting position) and this was plenty good enough to provide one shot kills on both white tails and mule deer. Good luck. — I do not exist to serve the state. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
If you can only hit the target comfortably with open sights at 40 yards. you better keep practicing, I can do that with my bow and arrow Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> … Young eyes can > focus on all three items, front sight, rear sight, and target and do real fine out to > 200 yards or so.
Maybe one at a time, but not all three at once. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> I was given a gift of a .308 lever action rifle (it must be over twenty years > old, but in great condition) and I plan to hunt with it this season. The gun > has no scope and area I hunt is densely wooded, offering no shot over 50 – 60 > yards, so I hope I can get by with the gun’s sights. I have been practicing > with the gun and I am quite comfortable out to 40 yards now, but beyond that I > am getting erratic and by no means confident enough to hunt with this gun. I > am wondering should I just keep plugging away at the range until I acheive > proficency out to 60 yards with the gun’s open sights or should I invest in a > scope now and save myself all the hassle. Any help would be greatly > appreciated. > Blasket.
Blasket, Do not succomb to scope fever. A scope is not more accurate. Peep sights or iron sights are much more accurate and faster but more difficult to use. If that were the case, every shotgunner would use a scope if it was faster. A scope will permit you to see an object better by magnifying it. However, there is parallax error in all rifle scopes. I think the reason you are having trouble shooting at longer distances is the fact that you are concentrating too much on the front sight. I will give you the classic example. When looking at a target which is 200 yards away through iron sights your eye has to look at 3 different objects at the same time but at different distances. The rear sight is the easiest of the 3 to use because you have to look through it. If it is a peep sight, your eye seems to automatically center itself in the peep sight. Now there is the front sight and the target. If you look at the front sight, the target is blurred. The front sight will be roughly centered in the blurred target and when you shoot, the bullet will enter the target roughly in the middle which is almost the bullseye. Now, if your eye concentrates on the target, the front sight is blurred. This blurred front sight makes it look larger and maybe even a hair off. This hair off translates into 6 or 12 inches off bullseye at 100 yards. So, the next time you shoot at 100 yards, look at the target but when aiming, look at the front bead that should be centered in the blurred target. Tell me if you shoot more accurately. I know for a fact that I could at one time outshoot almost anyone at 50 yards with a peep sight while they used a scope. I adjust firearms every year at the rifle range and I rarely adjust scopes. I will shoot one shot to see if I am on the target and decently close to the bullseye. If I did adjust it perfect for me, the owner who does not look through the scope the same way I do, will be off mark. What I do at the rifle range is watch the owner shoot…..correct any flagrant faults….get him to shoot a decent grouping which is very important to start out with. Then I adjust the scope to move the group towards the area where the bullets should hit the paper and get him to shoot again to check. Iron sights, I will adjust and if the owner does not shoot well with it, it’s because he has a few faults to be corrected. The goal is not to make everyone into a sharpshooter but able to place his bullet into the game’s vital zone. With a little practice in form, stance etc, you should be able to easily place all of your shots from your .308 in a 12 inch circle at 300 yards just with your iron sights. If your eyesight is good, I recommend a good peep sight as close to your eye as possible. Get rid of the sight halfway down the barrel and install something like a Marbles rear peep sight. Put a small ivory front sight or put some fast drying white or orange lacquer on the bead of your front sight. I wager you will be surprised at how accurate you can get. I would still be using a peep sight if it wasn’t for the fact that I have to wear tri-focal lenses. When I shoot a revolver (once a year) I take off my glasses….focus on the front sight that is in the middle of the man-sized blurred target 20 yards away and win the civilian shooting tournament we have every year where I work. Everyone is surprised and think I am a magician. I work as a civilian for the Quebec Provincial Police. Dan in Quebec Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text —— Original Message —– Newsgroups: rec.hunting Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2000 5:58 PM > I was given a gift of a .308 lever action rifle (it must be over twenty years > old, but in great condition) and I plan to hunt with it this season. The gun > has no scope and area I hunt is densely wooded, offering no shot over 50 – 60 > yards, so I hope I can get by with the gun’s sights. I have been practicing > with the gun and I am quite comfortable out to 40 yards now, but beyond that I > am getting erratic and by no means confident enough to hunt with this gun. I > am wondering should I just keep plugging away at the range until I acheive > proficency out to 60 yards with the gun’s open sights or should I invest in a > scope now and save myself all the hassle. Any help would be greatly > appreciated. > Blasket. First I would have a gunsmith look at your chamber and bore. A.308 should shoot out to 150 yards with no trouble at all, providing you are steady at hand and can see the target clearly, if you are bent on using this rifle, stay within your shooting range, but I would surley have it checked. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
Although a low power scope might help in target acquisition, it won’t make you a better shooter. Only practice, and in some cases instruction will do that. If you don’t practice the right things, you will not necessarily get any better. Two rules to remember. 1. Never shoot offhand when you don’t absolutely have to. 2. Never shoot offhand when you don’t absolutely have to. If they sound redundant, it because they are intended to. You will always shoot better with some type of a rest. The better the rest, the better you will shoot. Dan AZ Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> All bench rest competitors use scopes except for those events in which > scopes are not permitted by the rules. That says it all.
The fact remains that at short range, in heavy brush, in low light or in rain a large number of hunters prefer iron sights. There are many hunting conditions where a scope is worthless. Shooting a scope is certainly easier than shooting iron sights. The weekend hunter who never fires his rifle off-season will do better with a scope under most circumstances. Beyond 100 yards it’s no contest, use a scope. At 50 yards a scope just gets in the way. At 50 feet it’s a disaster, and in heavy cover on rainy days I have had plenty of 50 foot shots. — Larry Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
Thanks for the great pointers Dan, I will try your tips next time at the range and report any progress. Blasket. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> Blasket, > Do not succomb to scope fever. A scope is not more accurate. Peep > sights or iron sights are much more accurate and faster but more difficult > to use. If that were the case, every shotgunner would use a scope if it was > faster. A scope will permit you to see an object better by magnifying it. > However, there is parallax error in all rifle scopes.
Come on! A scope is absolutely more accurate than any peep sight, and a properly mounted scope of the proper power is faster than any other sight combination. Shotgunners don’t use scopes because shotgunners never aim at the target they intend to hit, the ranges are always short, and you don’t "aim" a shotgun, you "point" it. Shotgun slug shooters, those that must "aim" to connect, are moving toward scopes very rapidly. As for parallax error, you are looking at fractions of an inch at most ranges for which parallax is not corrected in a given scope, and only if you have your eye off of the proper position in the first place. Scopes have no parallax error if your eye is properly positioned at any range. All bench rest competitors use scopes except for those events in which scopes are not permitted by the rules. That says it all. Larry Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
Lots of good advice already — and one point I don’t see. Iron sights are a lot less vulnerable to rain and snow. (Even a peepsight : you just have to blow through it.) I don’t mean weather hurts the scope. But you may not want — or be able — to stop to clean the lenses, and still make the shot. I keep one rifle — wellllll . . . two now — with peepsights just for that, despite my antediluvian eyeballs. Both are short-distance rifles anyway; I do have the best scopes I could buy on the ones I’ll use if & when I ever get to hunt where I expect long shots. (Those are also the ones I use in decent weather even in "open" woods in the Appalachians.) — RR ‘Beartooth’ Neuswanger, PhD, NRA, etc. karhunhammas (at) lserv.com (new) Victim disarmament (miscalled "gun control") is racist and sexist. http://www.shadeslanding.com/firearms/cramer.racism.html http://www.mcdl.org/News/2000/GUN_CONTROL_is_Racist.htm http://www.blackmanwithagun.net/intro.htm http://www.jpfo.org/index.htm http://www.wagc.com/ http://www.sas-aim.org/ http://www.aware.org/ Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
>… I have been practicing with the gun and I am quite >comfortable out to 40 yards now, but beyond that I am getting erratic >and by no means confident enough to hunt with this gun. …
Are you shooting from a supported position or "free hand"? Any support at all is better than just standing up and banging away! When I was a child in the Army, I could hit man-sized targets quite reliably beyond 300 meters with the supplied .308 rifle and iron sights, but always ->from a supported position<-. — Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
Thanks for the great tips and while I am following most of them, the pointer on shooting with both eyes open sounds like it my be a great help to me, if I can master it. I will give it a go next time at the range and report any progress. Thanks again to all, Blasket. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
The issue of optics vs Iron sights is one of age more than anything. Young eyes can focus on all three items, front sight, rear sight, and target and do real fine out to 200 yards or so. Same hunter, same gun, 40 years later…simply can’t do it. Need optics to compensate for the aging process. A young man with a decent gun and practice can use Iron sights for any east coast woods hunting for example. His father needs a 4x probably for the same hunt. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> I was given a gift of a .308 lever action rifle (it must be over twenty years > old, but in great condition) and I plan to hunt with it this season. The gun > has no scope and area I hunt is densely wooded, offering no shot over 50 – 60 > yards, so I hope I can get by with the gun’s sights. I have been practicing > with the gun and I am quite comfortable out to 40 yards now, but beyond that I > am getting erratic and by no means confident enough to hunt with this gun. I > am wondering should I just keep plugging away at the range until I acheive > proficency out to 60 yards with the gun’s open sights or should I invest in a > scope now and save myself all the hassle. Any help would be greatly > appreciated.
Iron sights are in many ways preferable to a scope at the ranges you are hunting. With a little practice you should be able to bring down a deer at 50 yard with no sights at all, just by peering down the barrel of the rifle and pulling the trigger. You don’t mention getting instruction in shooting, so you may be doing lots of things wrong. Are you wrapping your forehand in the sling so that the sling, forearm and gun form a triangular support for the forepiece? Are you keeping your fore-elbow under the rifle? Are your legs spread, knees bent and feet planted at 45 degrees while standing? Have you tried a kneeling position with your fore-elbow resting against your knee? Are you holding the stock firmly between trigger hand, cheek and shoulder? Phase 2 is to standardize your sight picture. What are you looking at when you shoot? If you are looking at the front sight that’s what you will hit, not the target. Learn to shoot with both eyes open. With a small target the front bead will completely cover the target, so you have to look at the target with both eyes to see what you are aiming at. You will see a ghost image of your target right through the front sight when your eyes are working properly. Then it’s just a question of lining up the rear sight, front sight and target, and squeezing off a round. A 4" group at 50 yards from a standing position is easy to achieve with a little coaching. From a kneeling or sitting position you should be able to cut that in half. The sight picture is actually the hardest to teach. Some people don’t have the neural connections to overlay the sight bead on their target using two eyes. It’s best for them to just give up and buy a low power scope. However, a good scope shooter will also shoot with both eyes open, acquiring the target and noting the surroundings with the off eye while centering the target in the optics. — Larry Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
It may be the sights, are they factory? Many factory sights aren’t very good for acurate shooting. You may be able to find a good apurature (peep) sight for the gun. Of course you can put a cheap scope on it for the price of good peep sights. At any rate, you may be suprised how much more acurate you may be with good peep sights. I’ve shot in shutzen competitions where some events are iron sights only, and some are any sight(scopes), and the scores for iron sights are lower, but not exessively so. In fact, I’ve shot better off hand with iron sights than with a scope. When shooting on the bench, the scope usually gives better scores. The problem may also be something besides the sights. If your technique is poor, then putting a scope on the gun will not make you shoot any better, it’ll just help you realize how wobbly you are. I hunt with iron sights alot, and restrict my shots to distances that I can keep all my shots on a paper plate (about the same size as a deer’s vitals). So I have different ranges for standing, sitting, and off a rest. — Good fishing, Matt Moore Visit Matt’s Severum World at: http://www.virtualseeds.com/matt.html Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
Shooters in the Creedmore matches of the late 1800’s used a cartridge like the .44-40 and open sights at 1,000 yards. Without a riflescope it can be difficult to see details like antlers or horns, and it’s hard to see what’s in the shadows. I shoot a open-sighted .30-06 with cast bullets out to 400 yards before the sights obscure the target. On big game I would limit myself to 200 yards max. If you’re a good stalker you could take all your shots at 100 yards or less. One more thing, don’t go out without any optics at all. Even your aunt’s borrowed birdwatching binoculars will help sort things out. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> I was given a gift of a .308 lever action rifle (it must be over twenty years > old, but in great condition) and I plan to hunt with it this season. The gun > has no scope and area I hunt is densely wooded, offering no shot over 50 – 60 > yards, so I hope I can get by with the gun’s sights. I have been practicing > with the gun and I am quite comfortable out to 40 yards now, but beyond that I > am getting erratic and by no means confident enough to hunt with this gun. I > am wondering should I just keep plugging away at the range until I acheive > proficency out to 60 yards with the gun’s open sights or should I invest in a > scope now and save myself all the hassle. Any help would be greatly > appreciated. > Blasket.
You’re doing well: you have sense enough not to want to shoot past your ability. That’s good judgement. It maybe be that the iron sights on your gun won’t allow any more than that. There’s a big difference between the "afterthought" iron sights on more modern guns and the precision iron sights on rifles 100 years or more old. It’s a long ways from a crusty shallow V notch that doesn’t fit the bead right and a fine bead and peep or receiver sight. With a receiver sight, good ammo and a good rest, with clearly defined target and background and good lighting, with one of my dad’s rifles I can get into the 3" to 4" group size region at 200 yards. Everything has to be working right all on the same day, though. Typically I expect 3" to 4" groups from open iron sights on a Winchester .30-30 at 100 yards … with a rest, of course. That’s way plenty good enough for hunting deer. It could be that your standard of accuracy is unreasonably high, or it could be your shooting position doesn’t work for you, or it could be that the ammo you’ve selected doesn’t shoot well in the gun, or the iron sights aren’t "right". Putting a scope on is the obvious answer, but it may not be the fix all solution if you have a technique problem or are shooting ammo your gun just doesn’t like. Tom Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
>Invest in a scope. A properly scoped rifle is the most accurate, >fastest to acquire the target, and provides more certain target >identification than any other sight you can use.
Either that, or a good receiver sight as long as we are talking short distances. Some people, including myself, find a scope a bit awkward for close in work. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> You’re doing well: you have sense enough not to want to shoot past your ability. > That’s good judgement.
Can you say "Excellent judgement"? > With a receiver sight, good ammo and a good rest, with clearly defined target and > background and good lighting, with one of my dad’s rifles I can get into the 3" to > 4" group size region at 200 yards. Everything has to be working right all on the > same day, though.
Using a Lyman tang peep on an old gun, I hunted for years and could get a 4" group at 150 yards in any condition where I could see the target. It had a flip-up, flip-down, fine aperture for good light, and flipped down had a large aperture for lower light. Under the lower light conditions, my accuracy must have been slightly less with the large aperture, but because I couldn’t see the targets as far, any decrease in accuracy wasn’t apparent because my target was closer. > It could be that your standard of accuracy is unreasonably high, or it could be > your shooting position doesn’t work for you, or it could be that the ammo you’ve > selected doesn’t shoot well in the gun, or the iron sights aren’t "right".
There is no such thing as an unreasonably high standard of accuracy. We may accept a lower level of accuracy as ‘good enough’ to reliably do the job, but we should always strive to do better. I’d go with the ammo and iron sight combination as the culprit, and knowing how forgiving most rifles are with decent factory ammo, the sights are probably it. > Putting a scope on is the obvious answer
Not for the brushy conditions described in the original post, unless the scope is a low (1.5x) and even then, maybe not. This, to me, sounds like ideal conditions for a peep sight. Short range and odd shooting positions necessary in the thick brush. — I do not exist to serve the state. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
Invest in a scope. A properly scoped rifle is the most accurate, fastest to acquire the target, and provides more certain target identification than any other sight you can use. You owe it to anything you shoot at to be as certain as possible that the bullet will go where it must. L.C. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – > I was given a gift of a .308 lever action rifle (it must be over twenty years > old, but in great condition) and I plan to hunt with it this season. The gun > has no scope and area I hunt is densely wooded, offering no shot over 50 – 60 > yards, so I hope I can get by with the gun’s sights. I have been practicing > with the gun and I am quite comfortable out to 40 yards now, but beyond that I > am getting erratic and by no means confident enough to hunt with this gun. I > am wondering should I just keep plugging away at the range until I acheive > proficency out to 60 yards with the gun’s open sights or should I invest in a > scope now and save myself all the hassle. Any help would be greatly > appreciated. > Blasket. > Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: > http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
I was given a gift of a .308 lever action rifle (it must be over twenty years old, but in great condition) and I plan to hunt with it this season. The gun has no scope and area I hunt is densely wooded, offering no shot over 50 – 60 yards, so I hope I can get by with the gun’s sights. I have been practicing with the gun and I am quite comfortable out to 40 yards now, but beyond that I am getting erratic and by no means confident enough to hunt with this gun. I am wondering should I just keep plugging away at the range until I acheive proficency out to 60 yards with the gun’s open sights or should I invest in a scope now and save myself all the hassle. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Blasket. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
Iron sights are adequate out to 100 yards for large game. You should be able to get all of your shots in an area covered by the palm of your hand quite easily and this is fine for hunting deer sized critters. If you can’t do this with iron sights I’m not sure the investment in a scope will help, it may be that you haven’t developed enough muscle control to steady the gun or don’t understand how to get a proper sight picture. If you’re old enough to have trouble focusing on the front sight and see the target, then a scope is a good deal regardless. T > I was given a gift of a .308 lever action rifle (it must be over twenty years > old, but in great condition) and I plan to hunt with it this season. The gun > has no scope and area I hunt is densely wooded, offering no shot over 50 – 60 > yards, so I hope I can get by with the gun’s sights. I have been practicing > with the gun and I am quite comfortable out to 40 yards now, but beyond that I > am getting erratic and by no means confident enough to hunt with this gun. I > am wondering should I just keep plugging away at the range until I acheive > proficency out to 60 yards with the gun’s open sights or should I invest in a > scope now and save myself all the hassle. Any help would be greatly > appreciated. > Blasket.
Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
