What Type of Rifle Sight Did You Learn To Shoot On?"

Ithaca 22 Saddle Carbine, single shot. Iron sights, and a whole of BB gun (Crosman 760).

Results would be interesting to this same poll 30 years from now.

Biggfoot44 said:

Iron sights better teach fundimentals .
Iron sights on rifles ease transition to handguns.
For inexperienced shooters who don't know better ,optics ,particularly Dots are a major crutch , retarding their development of skills .

Click to expand...

And lasers with a new shooter are the spawn of the devil.

Iron sights on a Daisy BB gun at YMCA Summer Day Camp.

1960 Red Rider BB gun Iron Sites 1965 Over/Under 22/410 iron sited.

Unsolicited opinion here,
I think some people look at sighting systems and they seem complicated so they do not want to learn to use them.
Also, the fundamentals to any sport are the most important part of being truly good at it.
Go to any range and watch the people shooting. A large majority of the errors are magnified with equipment identified as the culprit, not the shooters actual skill set in basic marksmanship disciplines.

for me, scope... but only because I first shot my dad's nylon 66 with a scope on it shortly after I could walk. It was easy for me as a young kid to fine tune where the crosshairs landed and press the trigger while my dad mostly supported it. I mostly shot through a scope on a .22 when I was little and then switched to irons for handguns and rifles later. Red dots followed on AR style stuff and my sp22m3 handgun as I was older. That's with actual gun-guns. We shot the sh!t out of pellet guns in the back yard and they all had irons.

Red dots, scopes, and irons are all separate skills. You SHOULD be proficient in all of them. You should focus on the one you use most, and for defense. If you may need to use one instinctively under stress, that's the one to train for. For the vast majority of people, it'll be red dots. They are just flat out better than irons in almost every way. They're faster and allow you to focus on the threat rather than managing three focal planes.

If irons are your backup sights, then you need to also focus on them. However, you need to focus on them for their intended role...as backup. So turn off the red dot, flip them up, and use them in that configuration. For all, learn height over bore considerations for defensive distances(if a defensive firearm).

Scopes are awesome, especially the new 1-6 and 1-8 varieties... but you aren't super likely to need one with magnification under stress unless you're a hunter or professional. In those cases, it makes sense to put in work with your scope to learn ranging, lead, wind drift, and ballistics charts for your load/gun.

So.... They're different. It's stupid to prioritize learning on irons if you'll be relying mostly on a red dot, but you should have a level of proficiency on all three. The one good thing about learning irons is it's the most common sighting system across all guns. Even so, irons vary wildly in their design. A peep-style like on the AR won't really help that much for a glock bucket/ball style. You STILL need to practice and become proficient with the specific guns and set-ups you will be using...again, especially under stress. This doesn't really even get in to shotgun sighting systems, which are their own special ball of yarn.

I disagree with the premise become proficient on everything. Do one thing and do it well. I have been hunting from Alaska to Maine, when a battery goes dead or you bang up your scope or it is freezing drizzle and your scope is useless and everything goes out the door. The majority of the hunters I have the pleasure of hunting with do not us scopes.

If you are lucky to have the tools to remove your scope and still have Iron sites it does not mean you will hit your target. As easy as it was with a scope and you have a totally different site pattern. You may be rusty on windage, elevation and bullet drop by distance. Most of the rifles today have been sportarized and do not contain iron sites or they have been removed or the scope blocks them. I tried a scope once and due to weather it was worthless. When I got home I removed it and have been using iron sites ever since.

So in theory it would be nice to be proficient in every type of sites used but realistically it is not very probable. Do one thing and do it well.

Skipjacks said:

I admit this is my mentality

I tried red dots, found I had an astigmatism, and then suddenly decided that I am better than red dots.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I got LASIK and PRK (don't ask). I have fantastic vision now. But still a mild astigmatism. No problem so long as I keep the dot brightness low so that it is visible, but not super bright. If I crank it, especially in the dark it makes it real hard to see. In general though unless it is like max brightness in the dark the worst I'll see is something like a 2MOA dot gets obscured like a 5-6, but the center is still much brighter so it is fine to use.

On the original question, well I sort of learned on buckhorn irons with BB guns as a kid and then arcade games (kid of the 80s here). As an adult, first "gun" I shot was a muzzleloader with notch and post (my CVA Wolf) and then swapped it to a ghost ring.

Then it was a Mossberg plinkster with post and notch and Rem 870 with a bead. My first gun with optics was a Sako Forester in .308 as a hand-me-down from my wife's uncle. Haven't looked back. I really enjoy a good ghost ring/aperture sight, but the only time I like irons more than optics is on handguns (yes, I've used dots on handguns. Yes, I am better with dots on handguns. I don't like shooting them that way, not really).

Of course there are times I just ain't right. An M1 rifle or carbine, it needs an aperture sight.

When I started shooting as an adult (about 6 years ago now I think) I had contacts. With laser eye surgery I am much better with irons than I had been then. Especially in lower light. I had been about 20/20 for best corrected vision with contacts (20/230 without in one eye and 20/210 in the other). After laser eye surgery I am about 20/12 in both eyes. Beyond being sharper now, I notice in low light my vision is significantly better now than even with contacts back then (at a guess, more optical aberrations towards the edges of my corneas, so in low light with my pupil wide open my vision was worse even with contacts).

Iron sights on a Remington Nylon 66 in the early '70's
But was also doing a lot of shooting around that time with a Crossman 760 BB gun where I learned a lot about hold over and using Kentucky windage.

Straightbolt said:

Iron sights on a Remington Nylon 66 in the early '70's
But was also doing a lot of shooting around that time with a Crossman 760 BB gun where I learned a lot about hold over and using Kentucky windage.

Click to expand...

A good BB gun is a very good tool to learn hold over and Kentucky windage.
760 is one of the best