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Post by bigbrowndog on May 20, 2023 17:42:32 GMT -5
Another thing to remember is that “speed” comes from practice and repetition, no one is naturally speedy at acquiring a sight picture and breaking an accurate shot. It all comes from practice, even in the World of speed shooting matches the winners are well practiced much more than most would imagine. The sights used for that are typically post and notch type, there can be FO, painted fronts, and such but the basic sight is post and notch. On that note, red dot optics are even faster, primarily because there is no need to align sights and then place on target. Simply red dot on target,….break the shot.
Trapr
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Post by drycreek on May 20, 2023 19:27:59 GMT -5
I have red dots on a few pistols, mostly semi autos. The last one I bought was a Holosun that has a choice of reticles. One choice is a circle around the dot, like a bullseye. I find that it is more easily picked up, for my eyes at least, than the dot by itself. My carry gun is an S&W Shield Plus, and it wears a red dot. It takes a little practice, but not as much as one would think, to find that dot pretty quickly. I just try to find the sights as I’m presenting the gun and the dot is there. I do this a couple times each time I pick it up to holster it. Muscle memory soon takes over and if you’ve never used a red dot you might be surprised how quickly you get used to it.
Now the disclaimer. I don’t find it as easy to pick up the red dot that’s mounted on my .41 mag Blackhawk. Probably due to the fact that it’s not as low on the gun. Semi autos usually have the slides milled so that the sight sits as low to the slide as possible, and the revolver must use a mount that sits in the slot where the rear sight was and sticks up quite a bit more. That said, if I lived in bear country, I would carry my S&W M&P 10mm with the heaviest loads that would reliably function in it. The 10mm is probably borderline for bear defense but fast hits are better than slow misses, and I can hit better faster with the red dot on a semi auto.
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Post by bigbore5 on May 20, 2023 20:07:09 GMT -5
Baughman front with a good adjustable square notch rear sporting a flat blade face like the LPA or Bowen.
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Post by bradshaw on May 20, 2023 20:13:11 GMT -5
All iron sights are a compromise to deliver accurate fire under anticipated conditions.
Black-on-black To start, indoor gallery bullseye shooting presents to most consistent target graphic. For this, no iron combo has stolen the thunder of black on black square blade in a square notch. At another extreme, black-on-black may appear invisible on a perfectly camouflaged target requiring precise bullet placement. At another extreme, a sketchy, fast moving target blurred against the visual noise of cover.
Express Express sights are made to been seen fast, up close under pressure. None that I have tried on a handgun are large enough. Useless for refined handgun marksmanship.
Gold bead Having shot S&W gold beads, I generally prefer the Call (flat with slight bevel) to the McGivern (spheric, globular). Gold beads easily flare in sunlight, making it difficult to register the square corners of the blade for precision. S&W presented me one of the first M-629’s; while tuning it, I had ‘em install a McGivern bead on Patridge blade. I liked it for its specialty----poor light and moving targets; disliked the eyestrain required for precision. A gold bead is faster at dusk than a fiberoptic.
Fiber optic Comes to eye much faster than black-on-black, especially against background noise. And for a target of split-second exposure, fiber optic may just keep you on the clock. Fiberoptics disappear as night falls.
S&W red ramp front, white outline square notch rear My favorite for many years, much marksmanship, numerous hunts. A favorite all-around sight. Nowadays, mostly use the red ramp with black notch.
Tritium Tritium offers the only chance to see your sights at the end of dusk and into total darkness. This shooter prefers the 3-dot arrangement. Downside: an expensive consumable, tritium “lamps” die a fading death in 6 to 9 years. I’ve shot well @ 100 yards in daylight hours with Trijicon and Meprolight 3-dot tritiums on various SIG/Sauer autos, the Ruger 03, a couple of Les Baer 1911’s, and other handguns. The corners of the square post & notch remain visible, facilitating precise alignment.
While scouting a mountain with the Ruger 03 in the year Ruger built it, 2003, a cow moose plunged through the trees, slamming to a stop as we met, face-to-face. Revolver in hand, the two of us equally startled, she made a silent ballet pivot on her hind feet, to vanish in a bound. We would soon lose light and I retreated, also. coming into a rough field where a Scott Air Pack hung from an apple tree, I elected to test the Meprolight tritiums against the fade of sunset. At what later measured 70 yards, each of six cast .45’s, squeezed offhand, made its metallic CLUNK on the vertical 7”x21” oxygen bottle. Sun behind a ridge, light fading with each shot, the 3-dot tritium was the right sight, at the right time. David Bradshaw
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Post by kevshell on May 20, 2023 20:15:00 GMT -5
I've been waiting for the response above. 😎
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Post by contender on May 20, 2023 21:25:20 GMT -5
David has given an excellent detailed description of different sights & their good & bad. Read it closely.
But I'll add a bit to a few posts above that hasn't been discussed in detail
In a sudden unexpected confrontation with something deadly, (bear, combat, armed thug etc,) a person does one of 3 things. "Fight, Flight, or Freeze." Now,, in almost ALL of the sudden encounters by untrained people your body/eyes focus on the threat & not a set of sights. As such,, the type of sights need to be of the type easily seen, in as many varied conditions as possible, COMBINED with a LOT of practice. And by practice,, I mean add speed, noises, a timer, and anything else that teaches you to react, with motor memory skills, AND place shots on a target as quickly as possible. Instinct shooting is a term used,, but instinctive shooting is only as good as how much you practice it. We are not born with the instinct to shoot fast at a deadly threat, quickly, while focusing on the threat.
A charging bear will need to be engaged quickly, and w/o thinking,, using motor memory skills, that have become as normal as driving a car.
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Post by cas on May 20, 2023 21:29:12 GMT -5
I've shot a couple USPSA / 3 gun matches with a fiber optic front sight, with no fiber optic. It's not bad at all, and if it's light out, still works the same, a dot of light in the center of the front sight.
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Post by wyomingnimrod on May 20, 2023 23:10:02 GMT -5
I am profoundly grateful to you all, Pistol People, and humbled at the outpouring of help to my inquiry. Scour the internet though I might, no article that I found on the subject even remotely came close to being as informative or useful to me as the responses given here, especially Mr. Bradshaw’s outline of configurations and their pros and cons.
Today I shot my FA 97 .45 Colt with its factory black ramp front blade and notch rear sight and punished most of the river rocks that offended me. I have a Bowen Classic Arms Kodiak Converted Redhawk .44 Mag coming shortly with his white outline rear and white line ramp front, so I’ll have that to compare. Finally, I have a FA 83 .454 on order that will be ready in 20 months that I currently have specified to receive a shallow-V and FO front. So I suppose I could try them all out at some point. Sorry to ramble.
Perhaps it is poor form to ask a question unrelated to the thread’s subject, if so please tell me, but a previous poster in this thread mentioned using his S&W 329PD with FO front and shallow V rear for a decade. I too owned and shot one and found the sights to be useful to me for the intended purpose. But I found the gun to be a real pain in the ass (hand, actually) to fire on a regular basis and so I traded it along with a couple other firearms in order to acquire my first single action, the FA 97 I mentioned. My question is this (subjective, yes): how does the recoil from a FA 83 .454 with middle of the road loads compare to that of the S&W 329?
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Post by bigbore5 on May 21, 2023 8:51:06 GMT -5
The 83 with Ruger only level 45 Colt +p loads is a pussy cat compared to full magnum loads in the 329.
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Post by bigbore5 on May 21, 2023 9:02:13 GMT -5
As to the op, I really like the factory LPA flat blade, square notch rear sight on my BFR 500 Linebaugh paired with an all brass Baughman front from 2Dogs.
This particular gun has a true 5" barrel and that front sight is highly visible in the brushy woods I hunt here in the South. It's my favorite for following the hounds after pigs and black bear. Easy to see and fast on target for the several times a year things get hairy. And they can get hairy fast.
This combo has kept me from being chewed, clawed, stomped, bitten, gored, or otherwise a few times. However that front sight does lose definition in bright light.
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Post by 2 Dogs on May 21, 2023 10:37:59 GMT -5
So first, what I know about Bears is mostly related to the Teddy version!
Best comparison I can offer is some of these S Texas Bulls that can be pretty cranky, mean and fast.
The primary prerequisite here is a sturdy set of sights. Your sixgun might have to endure a rocky tumble before you can get to the shooting.
Now before you take this as a slight on FA you should know that I’m the guy who builds custom FA sights using real FA blanks and am long time friends with Bob Baker. I’ve never known it to happen but the FA front blade is held in the front sight platform with a small screw and an even smaller “foot”. FA does make a platform where the front sight is dovetailed into the barrel mated up with a trough rear sight. I have also seen FA’s with a non adjustable front.
You can take this as far as you like. My first John Linebaugh 500 was a Vaquero and the front sight was screwed, pinned, and silver soldered on. Nuclear proof.
I personally want BIG tough sights on my mean critter pistola. I have done some work here for those guys who wander where things want to bite, stomp, or eat you as well as the guys who work the dangerous concrete alleys. I’ll see if maybe one of my pals will post some pics here.
I do offer a brass bead front with the bead threaded and inset into the front blade. Feel free to call me directly to discuss your needs. If you get a sight from me that you decide you don’t like you can always just send it back. Fermin 361-960-3697
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Post by 45MAN on May 21, 2023 11:31:59 GMT -5
I DO NOT HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH ALL OF THE TYPE OF SIGHTS DISCUSSED SO WILL JUST SPEAK TO SOME MY PERSONAL PREFERENCES: 1) I HAVE NO USE FOR GOLD BEAD FS's, DO NOT LIKE THEM; 2) AM A STRANGER TO FO SIGHTS; 3) BLACK ON BLACK CAN BE REAL TUFF TO SIGHT WITH IN LOW LIGHT CONDITIONS; 4) ALL BLACK RS (LIKE A BFR LPA OR A BOWEN) WITH AN ALL BRASS FS IS A VERY GOOD ALL AROUND COMBO; 5) LATELY I HAVE LOST INTEREST IN THE RED RAMP FS/WHITE OULINE RS COMBO; and 6) THE BOWEN WHITE LINE FS/WHITE OUTLINE RS IS OUTSTANDING FOR LOW LIGHT AND/OR NEED TO AIM QUICK SITUATIONS.
ONE OTHER THING, I PREFER THINNER .110 FS's RATHER THAN THE USUAL .125 FS's, ALLOWS FOR MORE LIGHT AROUND THE FS TO DIFFERENTIATE FROM THE REAR NOTCH.
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Post by longoval on May 21, 2023 12:17:19 GMT -5
Some of 2 Dogs' work
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Post by oddshooter on May 21, 2023 13:00:48 GMT -5
I'm an old guy with failing eyes. Black back, black front, and black target all disappear into just one big BLACK.
I don't shoot much at all for self defense. My preferred style is 100 yards+ ringing steel gongs from bench rested. For my style of shooting, I prefer a white outline rear and a orange ramped front. I use bright white finger nail polish with triple orange and clear over the top. Inexpensive and works for me. I have no advice for others.
It took many iterations to arrive at my favorite. I can't imagine any other way of discovering what you like for your style and eyes.
Fiber Optic tubes just don't seem to give me a sight picture that gets small accurate groups (my goal). It might be fine for a quick body shot at 7 yards. I only get 2 years before mine start to go dim and worthless. But I do try to shoot all types of sights well; you never know what will be in your hand when you need it.
I don't believe there is such a thing as "Best". Maybe best for YOU. Maybe best for a situation.
Prescut
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Post by Encore64 on May 21, 2023 18:04:32 GMT -5
None of the above...
Huge fan of a vertical white line front and white outlined square rear notch...
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