I have a question for all the guys who say their eyesight is too far gone to use open sights.

Where are your glasses???

Seriously, I have heard this complaint on several boards over the years and wonder what the problem is with going to the eye doctor and getting some prescription specs???

I don't need corrective lenses and am still fairly young, and I don't know much about optometry, so I can't speculate.

What I can say is that most of the older men in our deer camp need some kind of perscription, and to a person they prefer irons to scopes - mostly, I suspect, because they prefer the rifles they've always hunted with.

Let me speculate a little, though...I think their need to use a scope has something to do with the difficulty of focusing on two or three planes simultaneously. Since they can't "switch back and forth" between planes as quickly as when their eyes were younger, they have to choose which plane they will focus on, and live with the others being blurry.

??? I don't know??? Maybe someone with some real knowledge can enlighten us.

friar

friarmeir,

Sounds as good as any reason to me. My distance vision and my reading vision have weakened considerably. Only thing that is sharp for me is about 3 feet away. I use reading glasses when I read and wear prescription glasses for distance viewing. Seems to work pretty good for hunting with peep sights on my 9.3x62mm.

Glasses they jsut don't fix everything I guess your just not old enough.

As already well noted, old eyes do not work that way and glasses from an eye doc cannot overcome the loss in ones ability to quickly and easily focus at different distances. I've been blessed so far and still love fixed sights, but some cannot focus on a front bead within an arms reach to make a proper sight picture. This is why some use reading glasses even when they already have regular glasses. Use of an aperture or optical aid that places an aperture on your glasses do help, but they are often not the best option for a hunting situation.

Best

quote:

Originally posted by friarmeier:


Let me speculate a little, though...I think their need to use a scope has something to do with the difficulty of focusing on two or three planes simultaneously. Since they can't "switch back and forth" between planes as quickly as when their eyes were younger, they have to choose which plane they will focus on, and live with the others being blurry.friar

I do know and it's a fact; at least with me. No eye glasses in the world can help you focus on rearsight, front sight and target at the same time. The front mounted low power scout type pistol scope was my switch over.
Using open sights today is lining up the blurrs with a fuzzy target. Multiple focal lengths is the culprit and so far the magic lenes haven't hit the market.Even my computer glasses are different than my reading glasses.
Why do young bucks pick on senior citizens.For shame. roger

This little device should solve the problem of not being able to focus on 3 planes..

From their website:
The unaided eye can focus either on the target (left) or the gun's iron sight (center). The MicroSight lets it do both (right), giving marksmen a better shot at their quarry.

https://inlportal.inl.gov/port...aturestory=DA_549448

I will definitely be getting one when they become available..

Touchy, touchy!!!

Not pickin on ya...you simply make the same point I speculate on

But when you get too old to hunt, Roger, I'd happily take a few favorites off your hands...if you want to give them to a good home, that is...I promise to take them hunting lots and shoot them every week in the off season!

friar

For me it's a focus issue (I'm wearing trifocals and I'm not 50 yet).

Aperture sights help a lot at the range.

My rifle hunting is mostly deer hunting. Here in PA we need to count points before we shoot and I hunt where it's thick. Using a low power scope lets me count points through the brush, or more commonly, confirm a deer is antlerless.

I only know a very few people who hunt deer here without a scope.

You can always go to a Red Dot sight like the Doctor Optic, Burris Fast Fire or Trijicon.

Doug Turnbull is even putting them on his Lever actions...

Or another thing you can try is to go to an eye Doctor that is knowledgeable about glasses for shooters.

That is what I did to help my long range competition shooting where iron sights are required.

He actually had me bring my target rifles to his office.

quote:

Originally posted by HUNTS:
I have a question for all the guys who say their eyesight is too far gone to use open sights.

Where are your glasses???

Seriously, I have heard this complaint on several boards over the years and wonder what the problem is with going to the eye doctor and getting some prescription specs???

Unfortunately, glass don't solve the problem.
The problem is, even wiith glasses, you can't see the front sight and your target at the same time.
I'm 76, and can attest to what I said. My ultimate solution was to have new lenses installed in both eye, when cataracts became a huge problem for me, especially night time driving with headlights from oncoming cars driving me bananas.
With my new lenses, I can now use iron sights just like a kid again, after 35 years of not being able to do so.

Friarmeier got it right. Some compensation can be made with peep sights. Then you can focus on the animal and only have one blur to align.

I'm almost exclusively a "scope man" but when I built this Mannlicher:



I placed the rear sight forward a lot to reduce the space between the rear and front sight to help improve the ability to focus on them. The traditional wisdom is to place the sights far apart to improve "sighting radius".

I do find that moving the rear sight forward helps. How far forward?....I think many of us would be surprised at how far it can go and still be very accurate.

Everyone is a little different. I'm mid-30's and my last eye exam I am still 20/20 vision but close to 20/30....just not there yet.

I'm LE and shoot a lot. Especially rifle and shotgun. Deadly with a decent scoped rifle .... but I do find iron sights at 100yrds very difficult to get tight groups with. Especially if aiming at a smaller sized target.

M4 open sights 50yrds off hand I shoot excellent groups. Move that arget to 100yrds and my groups open up big time. Still minute of man --- it's my eyes!!!!!!!!

Not sure why, but I speculate its due to astygmatism.

What bartche said + trifocals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GOOD LUCK and GOOD SHOOTING!!

i started wearing glasses about 5 yrs ago.... i can see good(?) at arms' lenght.... anything closer than that, i need some help... i have prescriptoin glasses, but they stay on top of my head most of the time... or i look over them.... when i visited KDF a couple yrs ago, Phil showed me a blaser with the rear sight waaayyyy out on the barrel... about even with the end of the forearm... i can see it there... so when tip burns finishes my .505 gibbs, the rear will have about a 14" sight radius, way out on the barrel.... and fiber-optics help a lot... bright and clear....

Through my computer glasses that Manlicher sure looks like a thing of beauty. roger

My eyes have aged along with me,to shoot pistol i went to the dollor store and bought low power reading glasses to see the sights,they are low enough power that i can see down range,the power is so low i can't read with them.

Always focus on the FRONT sight, EVERY TIME. Not the rear, not the target, but the FRONT sight.

vapodog is correct. If you have "accomodiation" problems, the farther forward your rear, and your front sights are the better you can "see" them.

im still pretty young 27 but ive been wearing glasses since i was 13 or 14. my eyes are pretty bad. without contacts or glasses i can't see passed my hand and can barely make out that its my hand. my problem is i usually wear contacts but if i wear glasses and look through a scope the corss hairs are bowed. does anyone else have this problem?

quote:

I have a question for all the guys who say their eyesight is too far gone to use open sights.

Where are your glasses?

They don't help. As others said it is the loss of the ability to adjust focus on three things at the same time that you start to lose when you get older.

So for that reason about five years ago I stopped shooting with an SMLE. I'd be OK for one or two shots but after that somegow you can't manage the jump from the three things.

I could still carry on with a No4 (as that uses a rear aperture sight that you look through but definitely don't focus on) but even that goes eventually.

The only solution is a telescopic sight!

Not an optometrist (I even had to look up the spelling) but I do know that the eyes are very complicated organs. Just saying that your "vision is bad" doesn't begin to describe the types of things that can be wrong either singly or in combination. And it doesn't get any better the older you get and there are problems that glasses just don't totally fix.

I'm very grateful to the chap who developed lasik because he let me throw away my glasses/contacts for nearsightedness just in time to put on glasses for reading.

At 51 I can still shoot fairly well with iron sights and I'm not too shabby with aperture sights. Eventually it will be a choice to use a scope or sit on the porch. Happens to everyone if you live long enough.

I have shot quit a bit with open sights. My best advice is if one still wants to keep shooting..have the sights made a little bigger, and shoot at bigger targets/ animals, as age reduce once eyesight....then everybody should end up shooting elephants in the end....hahaha
I am 41 years of age, and feel still confident within 175 meters with my .333Jeffery and 8mm Mauser. Hunting with opensights does often require, that one a very familiar with the area, so judging a range lies in the guts of the the backbone. Hunting in a unfamiliar area on new type of game, does present a challenge with the open sights. One will miss and perhaps lose confidence in a rifle( and yourself), that were usually doing good back home. Confidence in the gun(practice), good in judging distances(practice) and never shoot before the object is clear.
One poster above stated " focus on the front sight" is very true. Overstressing the eyes, by trying to get target, backsight and frontsight "clear" will end up woppling and miss. For everyday practice I use an airrifle or a .22Lr to keep my shooting sharp.
Ofcouse, if the eyes gets bad or bad enough, the scope is best solution.

I shoot muzzleloaders also, which has helped me learn a lot. I am not afraid to take a triangular file and put in a new dovetail. We have 85-year old people who out shoot me regularly.

1. Find a sight combination that you can see. A square post and u-notch work for me.

2. Install the front sight at the end of the barrel (obvious?)

3. Get a pair of prescription glasses that focus on the front sight.

4. Slide the rear sight up and down the barrel until you can (sort of) focus on the rear sight.

5. Cut the dovetail for the rear sight.

6. Shoot. Focus on the front sight.

quote:

Originally posted by HUNTS:
I have a question for all the guys who say their eyesight is too far gone to use open sights.

Where are your glasses???

Seriously, I have heard this complaint on several boards over the years and wonder what the problem is with going to the eye doctor and getting some prescription specs???

I need specs, just need to go to an optom.

But, that doesn't mean I have stopped shooting and I still shoot
multiple animals a year with Open sights / BB's / DR's and it is not
a problem.

Snap shooting / stopping charges is easy as I don't really aim, just point
and shoot but where I have to "hold" the gun steady and take aim, it takes
me a little bit longer to do.

Just my personal experience.

quote:

Originally posted by 500N:
Snap shooting / stopping charges is easy as I don't really aim, ...

i've never been able to make my eyes work with open sights, or peep sights, for that matter - regardless of my age or corrective lens prescription.

somewhere along the line i decided that they make scopes, so there's no reason to futz around with it - just put the crosshairs where you want them and concentrate on squeezing the trigger correctly - why bother with them?

for those who enjoy open/peep sights and/or do better with them - i say keep using them. for the rest of us, however - no need to suffer any stigma over it.

quote:

Originally posted by Hot Core:

quote:

Originally posted by 500N:
Snap shooting / stopping charges is easy as I don't really aim, ...

What's so funny Hot Core, care to give us your personal experiences on the subject ? (Or is this like the elk thread where you are the resident expert having shot none ?)

What the fxc# to you do when you snap shoot at close range ?

Wanker

.


.

quote:

Originally posted by 500N:

quote:

Originally posted by HUNTS:
I have a question for all the guys who say their eyesight is too far gone to use open sights.

Where are your glasses???

Seriously, I have heard this complaint on several boards over the years and wonder what the problem is with going to the eye doctor and getting some prescription specs???

I need specs, just need to go to an optom.

But, that doesn't mean I have stopped shooting and I still shoot
multiple animals a year with Open sights / BB's / DR's and it is not
a problem.

Snap shooting / stopping charges is easy as I don't really aim, just point
and shoot but where I have to "hold" the gun steady and take aim, it takes
me a little bit longer to do.

Just my personal experience.

I agree 101% on the snap shooting part. I have no experience on the stopping charges part but have done at lot of snap shooting with a shotgun.

On a quickly flushing pheasant you can do quite well with a quick shot guided by your focus on the bird and not so much on the bead of your barrel. When time is of the most extreme need I would guess that you would look, rather intently, at the critter charging you and shoot accordingly. Not always time to arrange a nice sight picture with the front and rear sights!!!!

Some lads have practiced this method by removing the sights on air rifles and BB guns and focused on the target to learn how to hit it.

I've taken probably around 30 critters with a bow using instinctive shooting from 5 yards to way out there and the best method is to focusing intently on the smallest spot on the critter and release when it "feels good". Also hours and hours of practice helps. When I was practicing with my bow a lot I could shoot 6 arrow groups at 25 yards that would be around 3" and could hold 4" at 40 yards with a lot of practice. No sights just practice.

If your eyes do not allow you to use Iron Sights - use a Scope!

quote:

Originally posted by 500N:
Snap shooting / stopping charges is easy as I don't really aim, ...

Unless it is a herd of fishing worms charging you, anyone who is a REAL Hunter will realize how comical 500N's bunch of bologna is. It is as bad as "Bullets hitting the Recoil Shield" as posted by my hero. So in order to avoid a HUGE bunch of appropriate comments from me, I'll just use what I'm thinking:

As my Ophthalmologist is fond of telling me I just suffer from "Too Many Birthdays"! When I use open sights I have a single contact lens that I wear in my right (dominate) eye. I find it the best solution to still be able to see and be able to focus on my rights with out my cheater glasses. contacts are single wear disposable type.

quote:

Originally posted by GaryVA:
As already well noted, old eyes do not work that way and glasses from an eye doc cannot overcome the loss in ones ability to quickly and easily focus at different distances. I've been blessed so far and still love fixed sights, but some cannot focus on a front bead within an arms reach to make a proper sight picture. This is why some use reading glasses even when they already have regular glasses. Use of an aperture or optical aid that places an aperture on your glasses do help, but they are often not the best option for a hunting situation.

Best

I wear bifocals and I'm up against it when it comes to iron sites. For my target Anschutz it's not to much of a problem because I can snuggle up real close to my rear peep and focus on the front ramp. But for other rifles I have to develop some type of work around to stay on target. I drew an either sex deer hunt this year in Calif where the laws are pretty straight forward about sites. "Only open type iron sites will be permitted". My new M-loader (Savage in-line ML II) is the talk of the town but lacks optional sites for us in need. So it's off to the gun smith to find a solution! But to give you a shorter answer, Many of us wear bifocals regardless of age (I'm 46) I don't know if 46 is old but it's not as simple as just putting on your glasses and having a go. For me I have to pick which site (always the front) to use. Generally using the front site like a shot gun.

I wil be 56 next month, and so far I am still very blessed as far as being able to see long distance. The problem is close up; I started a desk job about ten years ago and the computer really started working on my eyes. I wear reading glasses now, nothing for shooting, driving, etc.

I talked to an opthamologist a couple of years ago and was told to get reading glasses and keep going. When the time comes I can't see long distance any more I will do something different. For now, scopes still work well for me, and peeps are stll "ok". The real challenge is revolvers...

quote:

Originally posted by Doubless:
I wil be 56 next month, and so far I am still very blessed as far as being able to see long distance. The problem is close up; I started a desk job about ten years ago and the computer really started working on my eyes. I wear reading glasses now, nothing for shooting, driving, etc.

I talked to an opthamologist a couple of years ago and was told to get reading glasses and keep going. When the time comes I can't see long distance any more I will do something different. For now, scopes still work well for me, and peeps are stll "ok". The real challenge is revolvers...

That great! take care of those eyes. For me I am a welder and 25 years of it are catching up. Right now I have 2 cataracts but am able to see through them for the time being. Hopefully when I get the surgery in a few years it will restore my far sight. Fortunately, I can get away with my top lenses when shooting my auto pistol as long as my arms are some-what extended. I shoot a Beretta M92 and the stock sites are good. We will see what happens in a few years if I need a stronger prescription though?

Now I am 62. When I was young and joined the Air Force to be a pilot I had 20/15 vision and shot almost exclusively with peep sights. Longest kill (actually double kill) I ever made was with a peep sight and a 35 Whelen at 325 yards on 2 whitetails.

As age progressed my eyesight went south.

Started at about 45 when my eyesight went to 20/20.

By 50, far vision was still good by near vision went to hell. Could not read a check list or accurately read instruments so I retired from the Air Force.

Now, it is very difficult to shoot with a peep sight. Only have two rifles left with them (6mm Lee Navy, and a 30-40 Krag).

Almost all other rifles now wear scopes. Not complaining, but getting old sucks. Would prefer to shoot peep sights and they weigh a hell of a lot less.

If I were younger, I would still be shooting a peep sight. I only use a scope to better see the targets ( paper or game ), and I think most younger guys do not understand the accuracy that is possible if they practiced with a good peep sight and front bead.

Barstooler.

quote:

Originally posted by Hot Core:
If your eyes do not allow you to use Iron Sights - use a Scope!

quote:

Originally posted by 500N:
Snap shooting / stopping charges is easy as I don't really aim, ...

Unless it is a herd of fishing worms charging you, anyone who is a REAL Hunter will realize how comical 500N's bunch of bologna is. It is as bad as "Bullets hitting the Recoil Shield" as posted by my hero. So in order to avoid a HUGE bunch of appropriate comments from me, I'll just use what I'm thinking:

You really are a wanker Hotcore.

A lot of shotgun shooting is "snap" shooting, especially in the field
at jumping ducks, etc, up, swing, pull.

Same with a DR, open sighted gun, up, swing through, pull.

But with your limited experience of the world, I'll, let you go back to
the other skunks (family) which is why the "fishing worms are charging you",
heading for the biggest about of BS they can smell.

Have a nice day


.

How shapely you can see isn't usually the issue for older hunters. Glasses can fix that. For example, I actually see more sharply than I did at 18. The problem is that as you age your eyes' lenses lose much of their flexibility. No one's eyes can focus on rear sight, front sight and target at the same time. But, when your eyes are young they change focus involuntarily and instantly, so that you can think you are seeing all three in focus at once. At my age the time it takes to change focus at three distances is so long the target or gun can move, so you just can't shoot a tight group anymore with iron sights. Older eyes also need much more light so a peep sight only helps if the target high contrast or is in very bright light. I can shoot fine with a peep sight on a rifle range but not hunting. With a scope I'm essentially focusing at one distance and groups are small again. Am I making sense?

My eyes went to 30/20 my age: 25 so I've been wareing glass ever sence then. I'm 61 now. And
they help because I shoot with those guys that
think there nothing wong with there eyes.

Hunts, print this post and put it away to be read at your 55th birthday. I think you will get a good laugh from it!