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Randal Graham

Browsing through the forum and came across this thread, thought I'd jump in as iron sight hunting has been my passion since the beginning of my hunting some 36 years now.
I have had glassed rifles, particularly for coyotes, but most often use iron.

My first great setup was on a BLR in .30-06, front sight was the factory post with a hood added and what I came up with was a small platinum shotgun bead. On the rear the first really good one was a lyman #90 .22 target sight, it has finger adjustable 1/4" click elevation and windage and although for .22 rifles by design, worked excellent on the BLR with a modified mount.

With loads that would shoot .75-80 inch with the scope I averaged around 1.25" with the aperture and bead.
The bead was great but had light limitations for sure.

I later tried a lyman front target sight with different inserts, including crosshair, and with that I could get right down on 1" groups, but again, light could very often be an issue with this setup as well. i did stretch out a few shots on whitetail with this combo to near 375 yards, and one paced to near 400, but the conditions were absolutely perfect including light, good rest, and still deer with no time pressure.

What I came to that I liked the best was a marbles fiber optic sight on the front, in red, and a .125 aperture on the lyman in the rear, and although at first found the front sight seemed large, that shot very fine for me once I got used to it. I could also maintain 1" resolution with that set-up and I was perfectly comfortable shooting to the 350 yard mark with that combo if conditions were very good.

My absolute favorite aperture sight is the bsa/martini vernier sight, and had it been easier to mount would have used that on my BLR.
On my BSA I found it easy to drop under 1" if I could find really consistant .22lr.

Through the years I tried a lot of different sights. New england custom firearms has some peeps that mount to scope bases that are very nice aperture sights.

Marbles makes some great signts as well, including a new bullseye model for tang sight set-ups that I think is the shit for lever actions, along with a fiber optic front. Perfect sight for a marlin 45-70 especially.

As I start the process to teturn to shooting and hunting after an absence I'll be going back to the iron sight set-up, not that I have anything against glass, or long range hunting at all, my passion is just iron sights and "long range" in that context.

Here are some links.
http://www.lymanproducts.com/lyman/sights/
https://www.newenglandcustomgun.com/gun_services/peep_sights.asp
http://www.marblearms.com/bullseyeSights.html
http://www.trackofthewolf.com/list/Item.aspx/883/1