Part III. SIGHTS AND SIGHTING IN

Chapter 7. Sights with a Purpose. The Iron Sights

A soft whisper of dawn wind accented the autumn stillness, and stripped an occasional leaf from the maples to drop it gently on the small stream at the foot of the hardwood ridge. It was such a day as hunters dream about. Woods were gold, brown and incarnadine with the first touch of autumn, and grey squirrels were at their nut harvesting in the wide spreading oaks.

When I topped out on a ridge, the sun was still scarcely two hands' breadth above the forest. A whole golden day lay before me to be spent still hunting squirrel. What more could one ask than this?

I moved slowly along a hogsback, my .25/35 tucked under my arm. I listened for acorns ticking down through the trees. I combed the tops of those oaks with my binoculars, watching for the tip-off of a feeding squirrel. First shot was at a grey in the crotch of a high fork, with just the tip of his head show­ing occasionally as he worked at his nut cutting. I dropped into a sitting position, leaned back until I felt the firm pressure of a tree bole against my shoulder. At the shot there was no action for a moment, then my quarry kicked himself free of his perch and came tumbling down from limb to limb to lie beside a moss covered granite outcropping.

Next shot came almost immediately at another grey scurry­ing across the forest carpet, making for a white, bleached oak, pockmarked with woodpecker holes. I rolled him with a body shot. Then, picking up my squirrels I move along the ridge. It was shooting very typical of all tree squirrel hunting. Ranges were from a long fifty yards to a short fifty feet.

My mid-range handloads had been carefully sighted in at fifty yards, using a 111 grain gas check bullet, 18 grains of Hi-Vel, for a velocity of 1880 feet a second, a very killing com­bination on squirrel without too much destruction.

Nothing which might add to the success of this autumn day afield had been slighted. Each hunting element from rifle selec­tion down to the last granule of powder had to make some worthwhile contribution.

Not the least of those contributions were the iron sights with which my rifle was equipped. For a hunter never has an advantage to spare in squirrel shooting, any more than he has when a canny old buck comes boiling out of a laurel thicket.

Sights: Williams Foolproof Receiver sight, using a disk of ⅜ inch over all diameter, with a .125 inner hole. The front sight was a Redfield Sourdough. This combination is an almost un­beatable iron sight combination for anything from squirrel or cottontail to deer. They merit careful consideration when out-fitting a small game field rifle for autumn squirrel, with the idea of transferring shooting skills to the big game coverts later in the season.

Williams Foolproof receiver sight has the exceptional merit of being, as its name exemplifies, totally foolproof for that type of individual who must be constantly examining rifles about camp, twisting adjustment knobs on rifle sight, just to assure himself you do carry sights capable of adjustment. Sighted in, Williams Foolproof receiver sights can be locked, and neither windage or elevation can be changed without a small screw­driver, an excellent feature in a rear hunting sight.

It has micrometer adjustment for both windage and eleva­tion, so several different bullet weights and loadings can be cali­brated and noted for future sight setting data, without the com­pelling necessity of additional sighting-in each time a loading is changed to meet certain hunting requirements. For example, I have midrange readings for my squirrel loads, my long range full power sniping loads. In shifting from one load requirement to another it is a simple matter to re-set my sights.

The Williams Foolproof Receiver sight has one other advan­tage, which, I suppose, must be classified as one of the intan­gibles of rifle shooting afield. Its streamlined appearance, with its lack of protruding elevation and windage knobs, makes it, as the old woodsman Al Lyman remarked, look like you could hit something with it" In addition to that, there is another little naunce of accuracy in this streamlining. There is an added divi­dend in the lack of cluttering up of the bridge to obscure targets when the rifle is snapped to the shoulder on fast moving game.

Redfield's Sourdough front sight, the other part of this hunt­ing sight combination, will give more uniform accuracy under varying light conditions than any front sight which I have tested over a period of twenty-five years of hunting. It is rugged beyond belief, a square gold bead set at an angle of 45 degree on a heavy steel stem.

The angle at which the bead is set, affords very uniform lighting under all field conditions. Most any front sight will give good hunter groups under ideal lighting. Very few will not change their center of impact as the lighting is changed. Their accuracy is not uniform from the poor lighting of early morning to the bright lighting of midday. The filtered light beneath a heavy oak grove will give one center of impact, that of open woods another. But with Readfield's Sourdough, you have excel­lent accuracy all the way. Its square .070 wide gold bead is a large part of the answer. The rest of the answer is the uniform skylight caught by that 45 degree angle of the bead.

The square gold bead cuts directly across your target with a razor sharp edge—no blurring. So there is much less tendency to scatter shots up and down because different lighting gives different appearances to the front sight, something which con­stantly occurs with a conventional round gold bead.

A round gold bead will not only scatter shots up and down your target, but there is also a decided tendency to shoot away from the light. This is caused by a hunter subconsciously align­ing the brightest part of his bead in the center of his aperture. When the sun is on the left, lighting up the left side of the bead, the bullet will go to the right of the aiming point. This error of aim is enough to completely miss a squirrel's head at thirty-five or forty yards. At longer ranges of a hundred yards or over, it may be as much as six to eight inches.

If your rifle comes equipped with a rounded gold bead, a great deal of improvement in accuracy can be made with a small flat file. By filing, the face of the bead can be flattened to give more uniform lighting. The top can be flattened also to give more uniform grouping with much less tendency to scatter shots up and down the target.

A 1/16 inch bead can be shaped in this manner. Those smaller than this give you too little on which to work. Larger, so-called semi-jack beads are usually made of ivory, and are not easily worked into acceptable field shooting shapes. Best solution, of course, is to buy a square gold bead and replace the outmoded round beads.

The Redfield Receiver Sights, series 70, with hunter adjust­ing knobs are very good selections for small game hunting rifles. They have coin slotted knobs for easy sight adjustment, and once set, cannot be turned by hand, a very good hunting feature on any adjustable sight other than those used strictly for target range shooting. The Redfield Receiver sights Series 102 are very practical hunting sights where no more than one type load will be used in a rifle. These have no micrometer adjustments, and where more than one type load is used, they would prove a handicap. A hunter would be much better off to pay the differ­ence between these and their series 70 which have nice click adjustments of a quarter minute of angle, windage and ele­vation.

Micrometer adjustment, while very handy, is not essential on a .22 rimfire small game hunting rifle. Williams make a very in­expensive receiver sight for most .22 plinking rifles. Many models of this sight are of the extension type, putting the sight close to the shooter's eye, giving him a very good sighting pic­ture, and superb accuracy on squirrel and kindred game.

But to get back to our squirrel hunting under those oaks. My rear sight had one very essential part to which most small game hunters give all too little consideration—aperture size for field shooting. To be right, it must meet at least five require­ments for shooting anything from ground squirrel to game.

My first two shots, typical of all squirrel shooting that day, exemplify the problem. The one at a squirrel with just part of its head showing required precision. The shot taken at a running squirrel not only required precision, but also had an element of speedy snapshooting. Not all size apertures have enough shooting latitude to have performed well on both these shots. A hunting aperture must be able to quickly pick up a fleeting target, be it squirrel, rabbit or deer. It must also have the ability to resolve targets under poor forest lighting—early morning and late evening shooting.

The problem actually starts with our eyes. The pupil of the eye is the window through which light passes into the eye. It varies in size according to the brightness of the light falling upon it. Under intense light it may become as small as .07 of an inch. When light is less bright it will be nearer 1/8 inch in diameter. Hunters using a sight aperture much smaller than this needlessly handicap themselves.

Putting the yardstick of field shooting on the problem of proper aperture size, a hunter arrives at about the same answer. A large 1/8 inch hole, while excellent for the squirrel woods from the standpoint of light, it is no less efficient for a fast catching of aim in snapshooting at running targets, such as that grey making for the security of a den tree. It will serve, too, snap­shooting rabbit, ground squirrel or deer. In addition, it will turn in a good score on the more precise shots, where light is not the main consideration.

The outside diameter of 3/8 inch gives you a sight which is in balance, with just the proper amount of rim around the aperture to insure a quick confident catching of aim under all circum­stances. There is not enough rim, however, to slow you down, obscure the target, or blank out any of the essential territory around the game.

Smaller aperture sizes than 1/8, such as the .050, with an outer diameter of 5/8inch, the type most inexperienced hunters select for field shooting, are definitely target range equipment, and have no place afield.

Best bet is to select an aperture for the poorest light and the fastest shooting. You will not be wrong for any shooting where a peep sight can be used, from squirrel to deer or elk.

A consideration of iron sights is never complete without some notice of open sights. And, let it be whispered, all the experts to the contrary, for certain types of shooting open sights are very fast, and with plenty of practical accuracy. They are not the best selection, though, for all eyes, or all hunting. It really takes very keen young eyes for good field shooting with open sights.

As eyes grow older, and the tendency to farsightedness becomes more pronounced, a hunter using open sights finds his rear sight very fuzzy and indistinct.

Best arrangement of open sights I have ever shot was a Red-field Sourdough, square gold bead front sight, a straight bar rear sight, with a white diamond centered on it for aiming. Another very good arrangement is the same Redfield Sourdough, and a complementing square notched rear—the partridge type sight.

Of the several woodsmen who go in for open sights, I have yet to find one who uses them in the traditional manner of "drawing a bead" in the rear notch, with its unholy tendency to overshoot or undershoot, depending on the light. Most hunters use a full bead above the rear notch or crossbar, with the excep­tion of the partridge type sights. These are used with the square bead just filling the rear notch. Open sights used as they should be, are fairly accurate for short range squirrel shooting and big game shooting in heavy cover. In addition, they are very fast. But for long range game shooting, a hunter is greatly handi­capped with open sights on his rifle.

How fast are they?

When open sights are matched against the speed of a sleight-of-hand snapshooting hunter using a large inner hole aperture peep of the type outlined, the speed of open sights is no great advantage. They are very little faster than peep sights in the hands of equally skilled rifle shots.

Measured from the standpoint of practical field shooting at all ranges and under all light conditions, open sights are no bargain. Just about anything which can be done with open sights can be accomplished better with a good receiver peep sight. In addition, proper aperture sights tend to condition a hunter for telescope sights. And that is important in the overall consideration of field shooting, for it tends to make a hunter an all-round, practical field shot.