Open Sights: Good For Nothing?
Once Standard, Now An Afterthought
Sights on doubles can be installed very low, for natural,
shotgun-fast pointing. These don’t catch brush.
In prone competition, my scores with aperture sights often equaled those fired with my 20x scope at identical targets. Open sights would have doomed them to ridicule.
So why, as aperture sights were refined, did open rear sights survive? Mounted on a rifle barrel, an open notch is the least accurate of rear sights. Almost undetectable errors in aligning it with the front sight can make you miss badly.
An ivory bead inletted into the ramp pops up over the brass bead
on this dangerous-game double rifle for shots in low light.
An angled face brings skylight onto this matte-blue open sight (below), with a useful shallow-U in a broad V.
Progression
A metal leaf welded or brazed to a barrel is cheap and rugged. Evolving to fold, slide and adjust to our whims, it became more expensive to make but no more so than apertures or optics.
If the front sight is easy to see, an open notch is very fast. On a well-fitted rifle, it’s as fast as the bead on a shotgun. The notch merely confirms your bullet will hit where you look. And, because it can be mounted low, it naturally brings your eye close to bore-line. Fine British double rifles point like shotguns partly because you’re looking right down the rib.
In 1959, when I was a wee lad, Remington exhibition shooter Tom Frye earned press for a new .22 autoloader stocked in lightweight nylon called Zytel. With a nod to tradition, he began firing at hand-tossed 2 ¼” wooden blocks. After 100,010 tosses, he had splintered 100,004 blocks. The Nylon 66’s open sights hardly fostered precise aim but Frye’s aim was good enough and the sights didn’t delay it.
Less-accomplished shooters have used open sights to lethal effect when speed mattered. A hunter who failed to flatten a grizzly with four shots was fumbling to reload when the bear charged. “Shoot!” he screeched at his partner, filming the event. The bear was a cyclone furrowing the alders as the cameraman snatched up his .30-30. At 20 feet, his bullet caromed off the skull. So did a follow-up. The third, sent with even less deliberation, pierced an eye en route to the brain. The grizzly collapsed at the fellow’s feet. He leaped over its convulsing body, still firing.
Some rear sights have no notch, just a vertical white or gold center line. They obscure little. I still prefer a shallow V, cleanly machined to yield a crisp image. A U notch marries well with a bead up front if the pair is sized so a small rim of light appears around the belly of the bead. The U’s shoulders needn’t reach the top of the bead. I like a U that comes halfway up the bead, again, for better visibility.
While most rear sights are upright, the rear sight face on my Kilimanjaro rifle angles forward to catch light as an assist in dark cover. Other sights tilt to the rear, so they don’t bounce light from bright sun. Matte finish or machined horizontal striations reduce reflection without killing skylight.
In my view, the best open sight is of one-piece steel, drift-adjustable for windage in its base or the barrel. Folding-leaves invite error. Unless a hinged leaf is very snug, recoil, brush or clothing can raise or collapse it. If you aim with the wrong leaf, you can miss badly. Besides, open sights are best used close enough for center aim. A .416 in my rack has a three-leaf sight marked for 100, 200 and 300 yards. Surely, Rigby’s grand old cartridge works most of its mischief well inside 100! Whatever the cartridge, 300-yard pokes with open sights are exercises in optimism.
Faced with a sight that won’t adjust, or with elevation steps that are too coarse, you can tweak your aim to compensate. A 6-o’clock hold with the high leaf on a 9.3×2 Mauser salvaged my hunt. In cover offhand, I used it to kill an old eland bull at 40 yards. Later, alas, my wobble scuttled a quartering shot at a mountain zebra, sending the bullet a hands-width to 3 o’clock. After threading rocky steeps, the injured beast broke cover to scramble across a face at 160 yards. It tumbled to my heavy softnose, fired quickly from a sit.
The “buckhorn” sight hides more game than it helps you hit.
What other purpose for those crab claws? One fixed sight is enough!
Leaves accidentally flip. Will you really use open sights beyond 150 yards?
The Front Door
The proper size for a front bead depends on barrel length and how well you see. I no longer use beads that, in my youth, served in the squirrel woods. My eyes want bigger beads, gold-hued or white, with flat faces. Spherical bead faces can misdirect your eye as light reflects from the sun-side curve. Big beads aren’t too big if you can see a bit of the target around them. My open-sight shooting is mostly at animals with vitals big as soccer balls, at ranges under 150 yards. It matters not if the bead subtends half the depth of the chest. If I’ve zeroed to keep bullets “inside the bead,” they’ll hit what I can’t see behind it.
In the halcyon days of hunting in Africa and India, many double rifles had big ivory-faced beads you could flip up from the front ramp onto the fixed brass bead. So tended, the rifle was suited for night shooting, or for close, urgent shots in poor light.
An alternative to a bead front sight is the Patridge, a sturdy, square-topped blade with vertical or angled face. The Sourdough version has an angled inset on top. Skinner Sights offers 0.065 Patridge sights in brass and steel, also angled steel 0.080 Bear Busters, in addition to fiber optic and flat-faced 0.062 beads. The company’s aperture sights include those to replace open sights on barrels or ribs. Five aperture sizes range from 0.040 to 0.155. The larger holes, of course, excel as the sight is placed farther from your eye.
Fiber-optic front sights instantly catch your attention. They sell well, even on rifles of traditional bent. Ruger’s Marlin SBL .45-70 wears an adjustable HiViz ghost ring sight and a HiViz green tritium-ringed fiber optic rod on a thick blade atop a ramp. Sights aren’t the only departure from tradition on this Model 1895-based rifle. For old eyes, they make it more effective. The size and glow of most fiber optic beads preclude fine aim but their speed on target more than compensates in thickets where open sights are most useful. My SAUER 101 in 9.3×62 has a generous fiber optic front sight. The sides of the rear sight taper up toward its U notch, leaving little flank obscuring the target. An orange triangle on the rear sight’s face points to the U. Both sights grab your eye by the lapels!
A month ago at this writing, a friend fatally shot a Cape buffalo in the chest at 30 steps as it came toward us double-time. But the bull didn’t pause. I can’t recall the image over the open sights as my rifle added two solids to the ensuing volley — only that bead and notch, hooked up naturally, right away. This uncomplicated marriage still serves sharp-eyed youth under fall beeches, and hunters whose lives depend on fast aim. Perhaps open sights need no further defense.
