Lever action - Peep vs. buckhorn sights?

D

Dave3006

New member
I am thinking about getting a Winchester 94 trapper in 30/30 or a Marlin 1894P in .44 magnum. It seems the first thing everyone does is to put an Ashley or Williams peep sights on these guns. I am interested to know if anyone actually likes the open sights better? Are there any advantages to the factory sights?

Thanks,
Dave
 
Advantages for the factory sights?

Yeah, they're cheap for the factory to put them on. :)


Actually, the ONLY advantage I can think of for the buckhorn sights are that they can be very fast.

But, they are also pretty imprecise.

A ghost ring peep sight is just as fast.
 
Many tests have been done over the years comparing open, peep and scope sights. The best for accuracy and speed are scopes, but the peep is a close second with the open sight a distant third. Note that the US and British military went to peeps for their WW2 rifles. The major advantage of the peep is that focus is on the front sight with the peep ignored, less to align. Better for aging eyes also.
 
How about a Tang sight. One of the websites, Lyman's I think said the peep type site is 33% more accurate than open sites at 100 yards. I'm not sure of that but a tang sight can be folded out of the way and used when you have the time to flip it up and adjust it. MWT
 
buckhorns for speed, Big apature peeps are just as fast, small peeps are slow but far more accurate, I would get that flip full buckhorn sight from brownells, it has a large full buckhorn, then you flip it and it has a smaller more percise sight on a latter type system, sounds great to me, bit pricy for my tastes.
 
Dave,
A problem you run into on the Trapper model is that the sight radius with standard barrel sights is extra short since the barrel is too. A peep really helps on this particular model.

In general though, on larger rifles, I don't find barrel sights much handicap at all. Peep sights are better, but not a whole lot, at least until ranges are into multiple hundred yards.
 
I had a huge problem with my Winchester 94 in 45LC. and the buckhorn factory sights. The problem was the sun's reflection off the surfaces of both the rear and front sights caused errors in sight alignment. Putting a Williams FP-94SE peep sight helped tremendously.
 
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