what size peep hole for hunting

[nekshot]

I am too tight to buy anything other than necessities so I get creative! I need a sight for latest carcano project. It(the dove tail in barrel) is about 16 inches in front of eye when gun is shouldered and the barrel is 20 and a half inches long.I always get these holes too big and for those of you who shoot alot with peeps what is a good size for hunting close to around 100yards? Thanks for your input.

[tim338]

I prefer a ghost ring for hunting.

[dragon813gt]

For a barrel mount like that I have a .125 in a Skinner on a Savage 99. For a receiver mount I use either .096 or an adjustable aperture. You may find you like an even larger aperture size.

[Larry Gibson]

If you can focus the front sight sharply with your eyes w/o the rear aperture you are fortunate.....still so just start small with a drill hole and enlarge to suit you fancy. If your eyes are such you need the rear aperture to get the front sight into focus (sharp and clear) then fashion a temp rear sight out of stiff card or plastic. Then you can start small and drill out a step at a time until the front sight loses focus. You then know that size is too large for your eyes. Make the replacement rear aperture a drill size or two smaller.

Larry Gibson

[nekshot]

Thanks fellas, that gives me a clear start. My eye sight has changed with age but I still have decent ability to focus on front site so I am looking forward to using open sites more again. When I get money together I want to buy a decent scope as I will need one with 8 to 10 inch eye relief. This gun has me very excited because it is what I call a perfect fun gun for hunting the Appalachian mountains even though I may never hunt them again. But I can dream!!

[johnson1942]

i have several skinner ghost ring sights and i take out the apeture sight and use the hole it goes into. ive also silver soldered small washers to buckhorn sights and other sights that fit a 3/8 th dove tail. the eye will center the front sight on even a larger hole. when i shoot my montana vintage soule sight i use the largest hole on my hadley cup. again the eye will center on the center of it with a front sight in front of it. nothing better than a ghost ring to shoot with out a scope.

[Char-Gar]

Aperture size is always a compromise between being small enough to keep a sharp focus on the front sight and being too small to quick use. Eyes being an individual thing, there is no one size fits all.

Back in the day, it was common to remove the aperture for hunting at short to medium ranges. This was the original "ghost ring". Today this term has been taken to apply to very large apertures.

Back before WWII, Lyman had a little flip down/up aperture build into the sight. The sight could be used without aperture for close in shooting and the little "squinter" flipped up if a longer shot came along. You still had the option to screw in an aperture for range use.

The Williams "Twilight" Apertures comes in several sizes that work well for field use.

If you want a one size does it all, the Merit with the adjustable iris does well on and off the range in all kinds of light conditions with all kinds of eyes.

I know you want somebody to tell you to use "X" or "Y" size aperture for field use, but life does not work that way, due to all the variable of light, usage and eyes.

Never give up your dreams of doing what you used to do. The days are long gone when I can rim the canyons of West Texas looking for the really big buck holed up below, or packing in by horse to the Gila wilderness in search of elk, but I still keep planning for the next great hunt that will never happen. This is how we hold on to who were are.

[country gent]

What I would recomend and have done when rebuilding servige rifle sights on garands for friends is get the slider sight done and back on rifle with the battle rifle appeture thred and a section of bolt peened in tight and loctited fitted down and a .035-.040 hole drilled to start. Then have the person sight on a target and see how it works open up size .005 at a time until its "Just Right". A set of number drills can be used as a reamer at the range with a small tap handle to open hole up in these steps by hand. M14 match sights were .o52 or .059 I think as they came. I also cut some extra teeth on the slide so it could easily be removed and reinstalled.

[Hardcast416taylor]

Many, many years back when I had an old Model Win. 94 .30-30 with a William`s peep sight on it somebody had done before I owned it. I was having trouble using the aperature in the sight for fast snap shots. A old shooting friend of my family simply said ` take the aperature out for hunting`. I did and used the sight without the aperature for hunting from then on. I still vaguely saw the larger hole where it had been screwed in that acted as a `large` aperature for hunting.Robert

[nekshot]

Thanks for all the encouragement and I used a plastic card drilling holes untill I felt comfortable and then I made the sight. I will need a higher front site but that was expected. Now that that is done I move on to the butt end of stock and start working on a cartridge holder in stock with the recoil pad having a part of it pivot to open and expose the cartridge(s). Again thanks for your kind words!

[waksupi]

It's easy to start small, and work up.

As much as I like the Skinner sights, I do find a draw back. They are not as fast on target as a receiver mounted aperture.

[EDG]

Williams from the 1960s offered two sizes - the .093 and the .125.

You know all those receiver sights that you see with out a disk?
That is how they were used. I have bought used and sold a number of them so I have a small vial of the inserts.
When they are too small and your eyes are too old you will see a lot of fuzz and the hole will not be round - to me it is D shaped due to age or astigmatism.
As I increase the hole the fuzz and the D shape goes away.

How they work depends on how close to your eye they are, how big your front bead is and how long the barrel is.

There are Hadley disks that have multiple holes in them used by BPCR shooter to adjust for ambient light.

You can shoot a receiver sight easily with a .125 aperture and still have good hunting accuracy.


I have seen 2 world class women shooters shoot 1" groups outdoors prone with Anschutz match rifles while sorting Eley ammo. I know you can
shoot those sights really well if you have both front and rear apertures and you are shooting at a round black bullseye on a white background.