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To hunt in Montana's Heritage Muzzle Loader Season, you have to use a sidelock rifle with loose powder, full-bore pure lead bullets (no sabots, skirts, gas checks, etc.), and no optical magnification devices. If I remember the little flyer MT FWP put out on weapon restriction for the Heritage season, fiber optic and red dot sights aren't legal either. Last year I had a gunsmith mount a Skinner peep as close to my eye as possible on the barrel of my .50 cal Renegade, but while working on an elk load last December, I found that the factory 3/32 front bead was too coarse for precision aiming, even with the peep. In Western MT these days most mountain deer and elk hunting is done in fairly heavy timber, so I like the ruggedness and brush-hardiness of a simple barrel-mounted peep and a front blade, as opposed to a front globe, but I want something which is better for precise aming than the big bead - for benchrest load development shooting and target practice, as well as for still-hunting in the timber.
One specific issue I encountered while shooting at targets with the Skinner peep and the factory bead is that while it's possible to be fairly precise by putting the top of the bead on the desired point of aim, my eye wants to center both the point of aim and the bead in the peep, and it took constant effort to correct that natural tendency. I suspect that varying degrees of success in correcting this natural tendency led to a fair amount of vertical dispersion in where my shots were landing. Another issue is that the top of a 3/32 peep is fairly wide and flat, so it was hard to know then I was horizontally aligned with the desired point of aim. Together, I suspect that these two aiming precision issues accounted for quite a bit of my difficulty in shooting groups that were much tighter than 2 inches at 50 yards while developing hunting loads last December.
Last fall, then, I orderd a Skinner Patridge blade sight, which has a blade thickness of 1/16th of an inch. That's an improvement over the factory bead, but I was still hoping for more precision, as well as for a front sight which allows for precision aiming while the front sight and the target are both centered in the peep. To that end, I filed a "roof" on the blade of the Patridge blade, so that it appears as a sharp-topped post when I view it through the peep. See the photos below. Then I painted the sight a bright neon green with Birchwood Casey sight paint pens.
Last night I installed the new sight on my Renegade. While I won't be able to shoot it until our MT winter recedes a bit, I find the new sight system to be much more precise when I'm dry firing indoors, and I'm finding that my eye naturally aligns the point of aim and the pointed post top in the center of the peep. I particularly like the contrast between the green sight post, and a small orange center on a big black bullseye. Because we have lots of deer in our yard every day during the winter, I'm also able to test the visibility of the sight on game during a variety of light, snow cover, and other background conditions.
So far, I'm liking what I see, so in case others are looking for precision iron sight options for their hunting, I thought I'd post the discussion of why I chose these sights, and the photos below. I couldn't get my I-Phone camera to focus on both the front sight and the target at the same time, so in the photo the sight appears fairly fuzzy. When sighting through the peep, though, I find that I can easily see the point on top of the front post, and that the point definitely helps me refine the horizontal component of my aiming. Any thoughts?
One specific issue I encountered while shooting at targets with the Skinner peep and the factory bead is that while it's possible to be fairly precise by putting the top of the bead on the desired point of aim, my eye wants to center both the point of aim and the bead in the peep, and it took constant effort to correct that natural tendency. I suspect that varying degrees of success in correcting this natural tendency led to a fair amount of vertical dispersion in where my shots were landing. Another issue is that the top of a 3/32 peep is fairly wide and flat, so it was hard to know then I was horizontally aligned with the desired point of aim. Together, I suspect that these two aiming precision issues accounted for quite a bit of my difficulty in shooting groups that were much tighter than 2 inches at 50 yards while developing hunting loads last December.
Last fall, then, I orderd a Skinner Patridge blade sight, which has a blade thickness of 1/16th of an inch. That's an improvement over the factory bead, but I was still hoping for more precision, as well as for a front sight which allows for precision aiming while the front sight and the target are both centered in the peep. To that end, I filed a "roof" on the blade of the Patridge blade, so that it appears as a sharp-topped post when I view it through the peep. See the photos below. Then I painted the sight a bright neon green with Birchwood Casey sight paint pens.
Last night I installed the new sight on my Renegade. While I won't be able to shoot it until our MT winter recedes a bit, I find the new sight system to be much more precise when I'm dry firing indoors, and I'm finding that my eye naturally aligns the point of aim and the pointed post top in the center of the peep. I particularly like the contrast between the green sight post, and a small orange center on a big black bullseye. Because we have lots of deer in our yard every day during the winter, I'm also able to test the visibility of the sight on game during a variety of light, snow cover, and other background conditions.
So far, I'm liking what I see, so in case others are looking for precision iron sight options for their hunting, I thought I'd post the discussion of why I chose these sights, and the photos below. I couldn't get my I-Phone camera to focus on both the front sight and the target at the same time, so in the photo the sight appears fairly fuzzy. When sighting through the peep, though, I find that I can easily see the point on top of the front post, and that the point definitely helps me refine the horizontal component of my aiming. Any thoughts?
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