Thread: Pleasantly surprised. Time to hunt with irons?

Decided I'd take the wee scope off my A2 carbine today and see how she went with irons. Lined up at 100m (the scope on my Kimber is in cm@100m so I'm a euro metre man now..)
Wanted it to be about 3" high at 100 for a zero at 200 with the federal blue box 150gr, I know it shoots this ammunition lights out as I shot a tiny little ragged hole group with a 4x scope on it the day I got it. I had a good rest shooting off bags off the back of my ute and conditions were really nice if not a little bright and warm. First shot went bang on with the bull elevation wise but a couple inches to the right, adjusted the sights and shot another and was slightly higher and a little less right so adjusted again a bit more this time and figured that since it was difficult to even see the bull at 100m I could use outside of the front sight hood as a reference point also. Fired again and checked with binos and was a little low still but bang on left to right so I decided to fire two more and see if I could get a group, again lining up carefully and using the hood as a second reference point. Bang, bang. Walked up on target and was very pleasantly surprised! I do wonder if trying to adjust higher again to get a full 3" high may be a wasted exercise and I'm better just practising and attempting to repeat my "beginners luck" and then practising shooting at various distances anyhow. I'd like to be able to confidently take a chamois or fallow sized animal at 250m and if that all works out then I'll be taking the Sako into the hills this summer. I guess the idea like shooting a recurve bow is to shoot "instinctively" and make adjustments within your sight picture based on your instinct at a given distance.

Excellent result! Should have you holding centre of boiler room to 200 then aiming a little higher on the animal if you know it's further?

Are you going to take the range finder with you or go full retro and recalibrate your eyeball based rangeometer?

Originally Posted by Steelisreal

Excellent result! Should have you holding centre of boiler room to 200 then aiming a little higher on the animal if you know it's further?

Are you going to take the range finder with you or go full retro and recalibrate your eyeball based rangeometer?

Like to use my rangefinder anyhow but I'm pretty confident picking if an animal is within 200m, any further and rangefinder comes into its own. Have a couple boxes of buggered clays here that keep flying to bits in the thrower so might go set some out at 200+ this afternoon and see how I get on with them

Clays are excellent fun with a centrefire!!! I just spent a few days out in the sticks where we had a few clays on hand to see who can shoot offhand the best.

One of the boys had brought his No4 along to frighten a few critters. He was pretty handy with it to be fair, though he did have to wear his glasses to ensure he could aim well enough.

Are you one of those lucky buggers Ryan that don't need vision correction?

Originally Posted by Steelisreal

Clays are excellent fun with a centrefire!!! I just spent a few days out in the sticks where we had a few clays on hand to see who can shoot offhand the best.

One of the boys had brought his No4 along to frighten a few critters. He was pretty handy with it to be fair, though he did have to wear his glasses to ensure he could aim well enough.

Are you one of those lucky buggers Ryan that don't need vision correction?

Possibly, I've always had good eyes I guess as right from when I was a kid often read stuff or spot stuff far off and people ask "how the hell can you read/see that from here!!??"

My age/eyes mean that even aperture sight are tough going - so enjoy your ‘V’ open sights while you can!

Sight radius is your friend with open sights.

On my Bergara BA13 moving the rear sight from its barrel location to the holes where the rail was installed made a massive difference.

I'm also a firm believer in changing from notch / vee sights to a rear aperture. Significantly more intuitive way of seeing a sight picture. Might be sacrilegious to do to such a nice classic looking rifle, but if you can get hold of a Skinner rear that would fit on the scope base dovetail that would be worth looking at.

Originally Posted by ebf

Sight radius is your friend with open sights.

On my Bergara BA13 moving the rear sight from its barrel location to the holes where the rail was installed made a massive difference.

I'm also a firm believer in changing from notch / vee sights to a rear aperture. Significantly more intuitive way of seeing a sight picture. Might be sacrilegious to do to such a nice classic looking rifle, but if you can get hold of a Skinner rear that would fit on the scope base dovetail that would be worth looking at.

Agreed. Aperture sights are the ultimate for irons, the longer the sight radius the better. No issues with parallax and in reality it's like an iron dot sight, all the focus on the front sight and the bullet just goes where front sight is. But it is true that sometimes optics do have advantages!

Ben, sometimes new tech is not always better

With the Skinner sight you do not get the real "ghost ring" effect unless you unscrew the aperture and use the back ring wide open.

With my 80 year old No 4, when I use the battle sight, the rear sight completely disappears, and you simply focus on the front blade.

Originally Posted by ebf

Ben, sometimes new tech is not always better

With the Skinner sight you do not get the real "ghost ring" effect unless you unscrew the aperture and use the back ring wide open.

With my 80 year old No 4, when I use the battle sight, the rear sight completely disappears, and you simply focus on the front blade.

Agreed, although I admit my #4 I find the aperture a bit too big. The aperture on my AR was much better, but in that case the carbine length gas block meant the front sight was far too close to the aperture, losing the benefit of the long sight radius, and basically the front sight post looked so huge that any target of hare size was totally covered by the time it was about 50m away. This is what I was thinking about when I said some optics are better! There is a lot to be said for long sight radius aperture sights for farm pest control rifles, even the simple mini14 sights would be great for my purposes, compared to the irons on the AR.

@ Ryan_Songhurst Sako do a beautiful aperture sight, that would match that gun nicely ,l shot a few rifles with them in Africa ,like you l am lucky to still have good sight & a good App sight is a significant upgrade from basic opens .

When we were on the PNG /Indo border back in the late 80's /90's the Indo's would give you a hard time if you had a scoped rifle ,so we would have shot well over 50 Rusa deer & a shit load of pigs for food for us & our workers/tribes with Winchester 1964 30/30,1972 44mag levers & a 303 jungle carbine out to 200 yards, as the river country had wide open flood plains ,the missus only dug out some pictures of our PNG expeditions for my up coming 60th the other day l had not seen in years.

This nice Rusa was at 135 paces from 6ft 2" me right on the shoulder as aimed



Sako peeps


https://www.customshopinc.com/produc...l-peep-sights/

@Ryan_Songhurst - Did you get out and annihilate some clays with the 308?

Here's mine (not for sale), mounted to demonstrate. Rifle it's mounted on is a bit useless though as it doesn't have a pointy bit sticking up at the muzzle end.

It was purchased to fit my Forester (308W) and I used to take it with me for greater than 1 day hunts back in the days when you couldn't trust them telescopic thingees.

it was almost perfectly regulated, once zeroed, for the 150 gr Speer spire points I used to use back then.

Did see some online in an Oz shop a few years back.

Originally Posted by Steelisreal

@Ryan_Songhurst - Did you get out and annihilate some clays with the 308?

Not yet, I lost my wee mate yesterday so been pre occupied with that but he's just turned up home again now, soaking wet and looking super proud of himself, assume he's been over the other side of Pomahaka river the wee bugger

out to 100m i can shoot as well with open sights as a 4 power scope. you can take the front sight hood off when you shoot, its to protect the front sight when traveling?