Why peep sights?

[bhk]

I have peeps on several of my lever guns and love them. I have also done a fair amount of serious target shooting with various rifles with peeps when I was younger. When hunting I find them much more accurate than notch rear sights, much faster to use, and much easier to use in dim light than other iron sights. When it starts to get dark, simply unscrew the aperture and use the threaded hole as a ghost ring. Works perfectly.

Merit also makes an aperture with an adjustable iris-type opening for those that want to tweak the opening size to their conditions of the moment.

In serious target work, you will never find a competitive shooter using notch-type rear sights in the iron-sight classes. They are just not accurate enough. In long-range high power competition, the difference in scores between scope shooters and peep shooters is very, very small. Scopes do, of course, have an advantage in the hunting fields. I just can't stand to put a scope on a slick lever gun though. I save them for my bolt rifles.

 

[wombat13]

I loathe peep sights. I know I can shoot far more accurately with them, but I can't shoot as reliably with them, because half the damn time I cannot see through them.

Seriously, this entire fall deer season was MADE OF FAIL. Why? Because I wanted to use my gloriously accurate Ross 1905. Noonday sun, I can hit cornstalks at two hundred yards with ease.

Twilight? Good luck. Camp Perry Mafia, except Canadian. Great for target range and utterly impossible in bad lighting conditions. With blade-and-notch, you can at least sight on the sky and hold your alignment if worse comes to worst.

So I broke out my military Winchester '95 with a notch rear sight and had much better success, much less frustration, and at least an extra half-hour of viable hunting time.

I dislike aperture sights for hunting for the same reason. I took an 8 pt buck with my Garand in 2010. Less than 15 minutes after sunrise in the forest, the deer was grey brown, the trees were grey brown and the ground was grey brown. The buck was 20 yards away and I could see him no problem until I tried to aim at his heart through the aperture sight. It took what seemed like forever to get lined up.

Now that said, the aperture sight is great when shooting in the CMP matches at my local club.

 

[Driftertank]

One nice thing about the HK diopter drum sight on my rifle: while the 200-400 meter settings are aperatures, the 100m is a v-notch, intended for fast-acquisition/close range/low light use...

 

[CraigC]

Are you guys that don't like receiver sights for hunting shooting with both eyes open???

...MADE OF FAIL.

God it makes my skin crawl every time somebody uses the word "fail" like that.

 

[Boxhead]

Also suggest that the aperture hole is huge or the aperture is removed. A big hole helps a lot when hunting and is none the harder to hit with.

 

[Red Cent]

It occurs to me that they may not have the faith in the peep and are trying to hard to make it pefect.

Deer hunting with a peep is almost like hunting with a 1X scope. If you know your cheek weld, you can get quite good with a peep.

Marlin 1895CB 38-55

 

[wombat13]

Are you guys that don't like receiver sights for hunting shooting with both eyes open???



God it makes my skin crawl every time somebody uses the word "fail" like that.

I haven't. I've always used the peep with one eye closed. Happy to learn if there is a better way.

 

[wombat13]

It occurs to me that they may not have the faith in the peep and are trying to hard to make it pefect.

Deer hunting with a peep is almost like hunting with a 1X scope. If you know your cheek weld, you can get quite good with a peep.

Marlin 1895CB 38-55

I imagine one can get quite good with all kinds of equipment with enough trigger time.

 

[35 Whelen]

I loathe peep sights. I know I can shoot far more accurately with them, but I can't shoot as reliably with them, because half the damn time I cannot see through them.

Seriously, this entire fall deer season was MADE OF FAIL. Why? Because I wanted to use my gloriously accurate Ross 1905. Noonday sun, I can hit cornstalks at two hundred yards with ease.

Twilight? Good luck. Camp Perry Mafia, except Canadian. Great for target range and utterly impossible in bad lighting conditions. With blade-and-notch, you can at least sight on the sky and hold your alignment if worse comes to worst.

So I broke out my military Winchester '95 with a notch rear sight and had much better success, much less frustration, and at least an extra half-hour of viable hunting time.

So you're telling me you can line up a post and a notch but you can't see a post through a hole?!?!?!? I could see this being the case if you have an aperture that's too small, but that's fixable. You need a larger rear aperture.

35W

 

[Vern Humphrey]

I have peep sights on several rifles:

A Winchester M94 .30-30.
A Lyman .50 Caliber Deerstalker Carbine muzzle loader.
A Stevens Favorite (made in 1895), which has a tang sight
A Springfield M1922
A Winchester Model 70 (the peep is the backup sight and is mounted under the ocular end of the scope.)
An M1 Garand
Two M1903A3 Springfields.

I tend to take the disk off my hunting sights, unscrew the butt plate and put it in the little hole you usually find in the end of the stock. If I ever need it, I know where it is, and my Swiss pocket knife gives me access to it.

 

[kimbershot]

serious peeps--camp perry stuff

check this out for real peeps. http://www.wssg.net/default.php

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Oh, yeah -- some of the best shooting is done with peep sights, from long-range precision shooting to fast shooting in thick brush.

I remember when Lucky McDaniels came up with "Quick Kill" where he trained troops to hit flying targets with BB guns, he went to the British at the Malasian Jungle School -- and they beat him, using ghost ring peep sights.

 

[CaliCoastie]

I like peep sights but I do lose the first and last 20min. Yes I shoot with both eyes open, so I have a 44mag lever action wearing an eotech, and another wearing a 2x7 scope. The rest have peep sights.

 

[SwampWolf]

Actually, you should focus on the front sight (just as you do with open sights. The target should be blurred, and the aperture a mere haze around the target.

Yep. Per Jack O'Oconnor (The Complete Book of Rifles and Shotguns): "...The peep or aperture sight is a far more logical and effective type than the open rear sight. It is a simple hole to look through. The peep sight works on the optical principle that in looking through an aperture at an object the eye naturally centers the object at the point of strongest light, which is in the middle of the hole.
"Most people cannot believe this. They want to draw the bead down 'fine' at the bottom of the peep as if it were an open rear sight. The beginner with the peep is annoyed because it looks fuzzy to him. It is supposed to look fuzzy, since the eye does not have enough depth of focus to keep in focus simultaneously both the rear peep close to the eye and the front sight a long way away from it. One is supposed to look through the peep, not at it, and to concentrate on putting the front sight on the target.
"The beginner with the peep is shocked to find that he can see so much through it. It just doesn't seem right. He rushes off and gets himself a disk with the smallest hole he can find and then he is happy. The disk with the tiny hole is hard to use, which makes everything jake because our shooter probably has the notion that the harder the sight is to use the better it is.
"For game shooting, the largest available aperture is the ticket. The Lyman 48 receiver sight comes with a screw-in disk (I always take it and carefully put it in a box which over the years has been collecting disks until it is practically full)...For target shooting, the small aperture is all right. It sharpens up both front sight and target. For game shooting, however, it is worthless. Actually there isn't much difference between the accuracy obtained with the smallest possible aperture and with the largest..."

And this from Jim Carmichel (The Modern Rifle): "...To someone who has encountered peep-type receiver sights only on target rifles they no doubt seem rather slow and unwieldy to use. Hunting peeps, however, can be amazingly fast. The trick of using them efficiently is learning to look through the rear aperture and not at it. This, of course, requires a considerably larger aperture than is normally used for target shooting. Also, the closer the eye is to the peep the easier it is to see through it. The speed of a peep arrangement comes from the fact that the shooter doesn't have to consciously align the front and rear sights with the target. Just putting the front sight on the target brings the rifle to bear because simply looking through the rear aperture automatically takes care of this part of the sight alignment picture...
"I've always felt a good bit of admiration for shooters and, especially, hunters who had enough on the ball to use an aperture receiver sight in preference to open sights..."

 

[henschman]

Try an aperture sight with both eyes open. It is a lot easier to find the target that way, especially if it is getting dark.

 

[Ignition Override]

In a nutshell, somebody else needs to try an SKS with the adjusted Tech Sight, and report on the improvement.