receiver site elevation

[rimrock]

Terry's comment on another thread got me to thinkin' about receiver sites. For us newbies with no mentor, how do you get elevation for a receiver rear and front globe --say at 300 yards? Do you get a mental site picture of an 8" circle at 100 yards, and hold over at 300? Or, do you site-in at 100, notice your site markings, then site-in at 300 again noticing your site markings? What do the experienced riflemen say--

Terry Murbach, at http://www.levergunscommunity.com/viewt ... =1&t=37050 said (ikept the caps so you'd know it was Terry and not me ):

"IF YOU ARE SPEAKING OF A TANG MOUNTED LADDER SIGHT THAT WOULD BE WHY I NEVER BUT NEVER WILL PUT UP WITH A TANG SIGHT ON A RIFLE/CARBINE WITH ANY NOTICEABLE RECOIL SPEED,[ NOT---NOT!!!---PUSH ]. IT IS OTHERWISE A FINE RECIPE FOR TROUBLE AND/OR TRAGEDY.
THIS IS WHY LYMAN INVENTED THE RECEIVER SIGHT 110+ YEARS AGO AND WHY NO ONE AFTER THAT PAID ANY ATTENTION TO NOR BOUGHT ANOTHER TANG SIGHT AGAIN."

rimrock

[jnyork]

, do you site-in at 100, notice your site markings, then site-in at 300 again noticing your site markings? What do the experienced riflemen say--

rimrock

That. You have to know your sight setting for each range you intend to shoot.

[Mike D.]

Like Terry, I am not a proponent of tang sights. Not only are they obtrusive to correct grip of the wrist, but they can be darnright hazardous with a heavy recoiling rifle. Nope, give me any sort of receiver sight any day, especially the Lyman Nos 56 and 21.

[AJMD429]

I'm not all that 'experienced' (but unfortunately I'm old enough I should be) in open-sight riflery, but the ballistic/mathematic principles involved support my opinion that it is BEST to 'sight in' at the longest distance you can accurately shoot, and work backwards from there, verifying as many ranges as possible with actual shooting.

If you shoot a group at 100 yards, and the ballistic tables say that adjusting for 1" high there you'll be 5" low at 300 yards, for every inch you might be 'off' with that 100 yard group you'll triple that error at 300 yards, just due to geometry, PLUS your trajectory is far less horizontal at 300 yards, so any assumptions regarding distance that are off will cause even more trouble. Conversely, if you know where your gun shoots at an accurately-measured 300 yards, you have less error as you calculate/estimate where you should aim at 100 yards.

Once you have the longest and shortest likely shots 'bracketed' on your sights (i.e. marked somehow), then it's up to you to figure out which distance to use as your 'zero', and which ones to hold over/under on.

With SOME globe front sights, you do get multiple aiming points, such as the ones with crosshairs that have tiny adjustable 'beads' on them, or circles, or both. My inclination would be to make the zero setting be at the distance you're most apt to need to shoot quickly, then it will be your less-common distances you have to stop and think about hold over/under with.

With SOME receiver sights (i.e. the Williams FP's with 'Target' knobs, or FP's you added target knobs to), you can easily mark a reference 'zero', and then count-clicks to go up or down relative to that reference.

I had some fun a year or so ago using a .22 LR and standard/subsonic ammo, and a Williams FP Target rear sight, and doing the 'click' method out to 200 yards or more. Wind kind of did me in most of the time, but on a still day, it was fun to reproducibly click so-many 'up' and hit the gong way out there. I did it because the long-range shoots with .45-70 sounded so fun, and I thought it might be cool to do it on a smaller scale/range I actually had available. I'm hoping to do the same with my .32-20 one of these days...