How good are you with iron sights?

Well it looks like I've got a lot of work to do. I don't think I can get get close to the groups you guys are talking about.
 
If you can see the target with iron sights, you should be able to hit it

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Shot this 5 shot group @ 50 yards with one of my AR's using Ferderal American Eagle $6 a box ammo. Troy Flip Up Battle Sights. Bluesky, 75 degrees steady breeze with light gusts from left to right. :D
 

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If you opt to go irons consider:
1-Peep or ghost ring
2-Front-post, wide blade, for a good index of elevation. (If the front sight is not too fuzzy when you aim, you're good to go.)
3-Use a 6 o'clock aiming point so as not to block out your smaller targets at long distances.
4-Practice, Practice, Practice!!!!
 
I have a Merit adjustable aperture that uses a suction cup mount to eyeglasses. Positioning it for using open iron sights on a rifle, and adjusting the aperture size, it makes both sights and target clear. I bought it for pistol shooting, but it also works well for iron sighted rifles. The image is dimmer, so it won't work well for hunting in the woods, but is great for range shooting.

You can take black target pasters or electrical tape and punch holes of various sizes to find the right size for the condition and stick them on your glasses where you normally look when shooting. I did that and won an inter-club military open-sight benchrest match at 100 yards, using a borrowed Swede 6.5 and paper-patched cast bullets. The 5-shot group was about 1 1/4", as I recall.
 
If you can see the target with iron sights, you should be able to hit it just as well with irons as a scope.
Click to expand...

You nailed the problem that a lot of us older guys face. I've noticed a rather dramatic change in my eyesight in the past decade, and things that used to be crystal-clear at 100 yards are no longer so.
 
Sparks is right.

I can shoot quite well with irons as long as I have optimal lighting. The problem is you almost never have optimal lighting.:(
 
I prefer iron sights myself. I think a scope takes some of the fun out of shooting (especially since I don't have anyplace long enough to make a scope challenging ... currently 50yds is about the longest I can shoot at right now). Actually my favorite setup is on my Marlin .22magnum with a 3 dot fiber-optic setup on it.
 
I have always enjoyed the challenge of shooting with iron sights. Here in VT, where you rarely get a hunting shot greater than 100-150 yards anyway, using scopes felt like cheating to me growing up. Not saying it is, but that's how I always felt about it.

Maybe I need to change my mind about that.
 
Learn the basics of shooting with iron sights and WITHOUT a bench and you will become a rifleman.

like LUCAS MCCAIN?
 
30 years ago 100yd coke cans off hand were no sweat, Jack rabbits on a dead run were taking their lives in their hands...feet. Jacks at 300 yds, no sweat....Now I can't see a coke can at 100yds...
 
Old people tell me that when they were kids they would wake up in the morning, grab their 22 and disappear until dark. These days not many kids just leave the house alone and shoot all day, and I didn't even get a gun til I was 24. It seems like rifle marksmanship used to be almost a basic life skill, and that's disappearing.
 
Most of my irons are some sort of peep. My better groups with good irons will be close to 1 moa. My average ones are just under 2. With buckhorns I'm close to 4moa but the only guns I have with regular sights are levers that wouldn't shoot moa shot from aa vice.
 
It doesn't seem to matter to me, pertaining to a scope or iron sights. I seem to miss just as much with either one....:D
 
MrDontplay said,

"It seems like rifle marksmanship used to be almost a basic life skill, and that's disappearing".

One of the main reasons for that is the addiction so many have for the shooting bench.
 
I'm passable with irons. In my car I have a 5-shot group I cut out fired at 200 yards. The first 5 shots at 200-yards through the new barrel I screwed onto my AR-15 this season went into 2". This was prone with irons, and not even "tuned" ammo, just some 77gr reloads I had been using the previous summer. But my normal prone groups probably hover more around 2.5-MOA for the course of a string, all the way to 600 yards. Offhand I'd say 6-8 MOA, again depending on the day.

To be honest, I have one rifle with a scope, and that's a 10/22 with a pretty poor 3-9x32mm scope a friend gave me. (He had peeled it off of a rifle he picked up and rescoped.) Everything else is irons, good peep sights primarily.
 
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