Folding Express Sights - how many?
 

Thinking about adding iron sights to a few of my rifles, leaning towards the folding multi-leaf express style sights:



Having the fixed blade at the back at 100yrds, then a 200 and 300 leaf would take me outside of how far I can really see.

These sights are available with 1, 2, and 3 leaves (plus the fixed rear blade), any reason to throw a 3 leaf model on?

By the second leaf I would switch back to the scope.

Why would you want to use open sights out to 1, 2 and 3 hundred yards when you have a perfectly good scope on the rifle?

...Taking the scope OFF of the rifle...

:DYou must have young eyes.

This would be a very individual decision.

I have a few rifles that sport irons to be used in the event that lousy weather or damage prevents me from using a scope. However, my old eyes would be hard pressed to make a decent shot with irons beyond 100 yards. Therefore, any irons that are zeroed for anything beyond 100 - 125 yards is wasted on me.

I'd get a set of express sights (or some iron sight option) to be calibrated to the longest distance I could confidently make an iron-sight shot.

For me, at 61, and with my current eyesight and eye health, the best option for me when removing or not using the scope would probably be a peep with the front / rear set up to be dead on at 100 yards. Or, an easy to pick up rear sight just ahead of the scope set up and an easy to pick up front blade with dot.

It's tough getting old but the alternative is worse.

Very few people are capable of any real accuracy from open sights past 200 yards. Getting that proficient takes a lot of practice which the hunters of old had. The sights themselves are just as good as they once were, but it is the shooters and shooting habits that have changed.

I have a Whitworth Express in 375 H&H that came with the 3 leaf model. I've played with it but I learned really quick that anything over 150 yards was pretty safe for me. Frankly a peep sight is the way to go if you take off the scope. Peeps are good out to 300 yards since your eye doesn't have to try and focus on 3 things at once. That is why the military went to them.

I side with Flags on the peeps. I also had the express sights on a couple of my 375s. I liked them fine, but the peeps rule for open sights. A few also had the verniers on them, which I really like as well.

I like open sights on some rifles. I have had folding leaf sights on big rifles before and ended changing them out for non-folding rear sights. It is a bit too easy for me to have the wrong sight up at the wrong time.

Not really young eyes, just really good contact lenses that take me a bit better than 20/20... I'm not sure I could shoot much better than "minute of deer" at 20ft without corrective lenses though...

I used to shoot some 600yrd CMP matches through iron peeps, did a lot of smallbore indoor with peeps where the targets were equally difficult to see, used to do some bp silhouette and cowboy action long range shooting 300-600yrds with tang mounted ladders with both peeps and V's in leverguns. Nothing nearly as accurate nor as "easy" as scoped shooting, but given the right target to pick up well, it's not that bad. I thought pretty heavily about peep sights, but I haven't found a way to mount a peep to a Ruger M77 that I really like yet.

So I suppose that's the real motivation for this little project. I used to have a lot of 'excuses' to practice shooting open sights, but these days, I'm not competing at all, so the only open sighted shooting that I do is on handguns, and I find myself putting scopes or dots on most of those anymore too.

Considering the speed on one of these rifles to which I'd like to add sights, a 100, 200, & 250 set probably makes sense (maybe even a 150 in there). The other rifle I suppose could even get away with a 100 and 250 with hold-over for 300, or 100, 250, and 300.

Too spoiled by dialing come-ups, hard to go back to irons without some kind of corrections!