I know there are a lot of older shooters on this forum who love to shoot, but whose aging eyes ain’t what they used to be. That makes using iron sights a challenge. I’m one of those. It hurts, because I love using iron sights - I learned on iron sights and shooting to me will always mean using iron sights, even though most of my guns now wear red dots or scopes. Yes, red dots and scopes solve the problem of aging eyes, nicely, but I refuse to give up shooting iron. Besides, on some guns, using anything but iron sights, seems, well, almost criminal.
First, about my eyes: I already wear bifocals, so my eyes have never been all that great even when I was younger. (That’s not as much of a handicap as some folks might think, because you do not have to have super vision to become an excellent shot.) I’ve also done the prescription thing for shooters, but I’ve reached an age where even that is no longer effective. To make things even worse, I have a whole boatload of allergies that can affect my vision. On bad allergy days, my eyes water and blur to the point where my front sights turn to mush. On those days, I might as well throw my gun at the target as use iron sights.
One solution that does work for me is an aperture. An aperture is simply a patch or mask over your shooting eye with a tiny hole in the center for your eye to see the target. I won’t go into why looking through a tiny hole sharpens up the front sight, but it does work. I make my own by heading to Wal-Mart and buying a cheap pair of clip on, flip up sunglasses. I then paint one side and drill a tiny hole in the middle for viewing. When I’m ready to shoot, I just flip down the aperture and start shooting. Oh, yes, with an aperture, my group sizes with iron sights shrink, considerably.
An aperture, though, is quite limited and neither practical nor safe for many types of shooting. I love an aperture for my bullseye pistol shooting at the range, but a person would be crazy to use an aperture for action shooting, self-defense or even plinking or field shooting. You need peripheral vision to be a safe shooter in all but certain controlled range conditions and you lose that with an aperture. I only mention it as a way to shrink group sizes at the range.
These old eyes still shoot peep sights, well, so my traditional lever guns and other rifles that are not stocked with scopes in mind now wear peeps. Peeps have put back a lot of that old iron sight fun into my shooting, but, unfortunately, peep sights are not a solution for all rifles and, of course, even of more limited use on pistols. Then, too, makes no sense using a peep on a gun that is specifically stocked for scope use or a gun that can shoot MOA at ranges that call for a scope.
As far as open sights go, switching to hi-viz and fiber optics or sticking with large, easy to see open sights of the type you get on most 1911s has been a big help. It’s those small, dark, super fine open sights that give me fits.
For the bulk of my shooting, then, I fight aging eyes with red dots and scopes, same as most aging shooters. Oh, yeah, I hate what scopes and red dots and bases and rings do to the looks, feel and balance of some of my guns, but without glass of one type or another, my shooting would suffer, both in terms of accuracy and my ability to shoot for any length of time at the range. Still, some of my guns will never wear anything but iron. I'd rather stop shooting them than put a scope on them.
In the end, on any given trip to the range, I take guns with iron sights and guns with red dots and scopes. I shoot iron, first, until my eyes start to get tired, assuming I’m having a day when I can even manage iron, and then finish up my range session with glass. It means buying and owning a wide variety of guns to have a lot of choices, but that’s not exactly a chore.
Hope this helps other older shooters to keep on shooting.
First, about my eyes: I already wear bifocals, so my eyes have never been all that great even when I was younger. (That’s not as much of a handicap as some folks might think, because you do not have to have super vision to become an excellent shot.) I’ve also done the prescription thing for shooters, but I’ve reached an age where even that is no longer effective. To make things even worse, I have a whole boatload of allergies that can affect my vision. On bad allergy days, my eyes water and blur to the point where my front sights turn to mush. On those days, I might as well throw my gun at the target as use iron sights.
One solution that does work for me is an aperture. An aperture is simply a patch or mask over your shooting eye with a tiny hole in the center for your eye to see the target. I won’t go into why looking through a tiny hole sharpens up the front sight, but it does work. I make my own by heading to Wal-Mart and buying a cheap pair of clip on, flip up sunglasses. I then paint one side and drill a tiny hole in the middle for viewing. When I’m ready to shoot, I just flip down the aperture and start shooting. Oh, yes, with an aperture, my group sizes with iron sights shrink, considerably.
An aperture, though, is quite limited and neither practical nor safe for many types of shooting. I love an aperture for my bullseye pistol shooting at the range, but a person would be crazy to use an aperture for action shooting, self-defense or even plinking or field shooting. You need peripheral vision to be a safe shooter in all but certain controlled range conditions and you lose that with an aperture. I only mention it as a way to shrink group sizes at the range.
These old eyes still shoot peep sights, well, so my traditional lever guns and other rifles that are not stocked with scopes in mind now wear peeps. Peeps have put back a lot of that old iron sight fun into my shooting, but, unfortunately, peep sights are not a solution for all rifles and, of course, even of more limited use on pistols. Then, too, makes no sense using a peep on a gun that is specifically stocked for scope use or a gun that can shoot MOA at ranges that call for a scope.
As far as open sights go, switching to hi-viz and fiber optics or sticking with large, easy to see open sights of the type you get on most 1911s has been a big help. It’s those small, dark, super fine open sights that give me fits.
For the bulk of my shooting, then, I fight aging eyes with red dots and scopes, same as most aging shooters. Oh, yeah, I hate what scopes and red dots and bases and rings do to the looks, feel and balance of some of my guns, but without glass of one type or another, my shooting would suffer, both in terms of accuracy and my ability to shoot for any length of time at the range. Still, some of my guns will never wear anything but iron. I'd rather stop shooting them than put a scope on them.
In the end, on any given trip to the range, I take guns with iron sights and guns with red dots and scopes. I shoot iron, first, until my eyes start to get tired, assuming I’m having a day when I can even manage iron, and then finish up my range session with glass. It means buying and owning a wide variety of guns to have a lot of choices, but that’s not exactly a chore.
Hope this helps other older shooters to keep on shooting.
