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

Point and shoot....

DanGuy wrote, "Started with a Daisy BB gun. Then my dad had me join a smallbore club at the nearby base that employed him so the Winchester 52 C became my best friend."
Check. Only the range was inside the original Silver Spring, MD, National Guard Armory. I think we were shooting rack rifles from the vault, .22 sleeved M1903s, perhaps.
That was a half century ago.
The Boys Club on Forest Glen Road had two activities worth the 2 mile walk, indoor .22RF range, and outdoor pool.
Then, there was Boy Scouts where I easily earned the Rifle Shooting merit badge at summer camp.
US Army was a few years later.....some of our training didn't use sights, they were blocked with a dowel rubber banded between front and rear sight. This was at the end of Vietnam, where point-shoot at popup silhouettes was important.

sights I learned on

Redfield Olympic on a Remington 521T .22lr.
Crosshair hooded and "peep"diaphragm on rear.

Iron sights was all we had. Never felt deprived until the eyes went away. Used a gun that goes for $60 to $130 today. When they were fresh those old Springfields were as good as anything.

Started on an old marlin .22 from the 40's or 50's my grandad had. Iron sights and a giant smile on my face around the age of 5.

Then it went to a youth shotgun - a good old .30-30 ran kept collecting and hunting from there.

Grandad got me that 30-30 when I was born, I just wasn't allowed to shoot it until I was 6 or 7.

Ah memories

For rifles, it was a Mossberg bolt action .22 at Goshen Scout Camp in Virginia with aperture sights. But that was back in the 70's and things are different now, almost a half century later. When I take new shooters out to the range, I want them to enjoy themselves and feel comfortable with it. If they do, I'm confident they'll be back for more. To make it as easy as possible, I start them with an optic. No worries about sight alignment and sight picture, just put the red dot/cross hairs over the target and squeeze.

JoeR

JoeRinMD said:

For rifles, it was a Mossberg bolt action .22 at Goshen Scout Camp in Virginia with aperture sights. But that was back in the 70's and things are different now, almost a half century later. When I take new shooters out to the range, I want them to enjoy themselves and feel comfortable with it. If they do, I'm confident they'll be back for more. To make it as easy as possible, I start them with an optic. No worries about sight alignment and sight picture, just put the red dot/cross hairs over the target and squeeze.

JoeR

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And this is precisely why I will be teaching my children to shoot with optics first.

fbi_surveillance_van said:

And this is precisely why I will be teaching my children to shoot with optics first.

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And if you substitute the phrase "be effective" for "enjoy", I think we'll have identified why the armed forces have moved to optics. It's easier, faster, cheaper for them to bring someone, like a raw recruit, up the learning curve with an optical sight.

Joe

I shot a couple of 22s in college. Probably not even a box of ammo. Don’t think I can count that as learning. Honestly most of my real learning was arcade and video game light guns with sights (iron or scopes). Which I realize isn’t entirely realistic.

Really learning was after I got my first “gun” which I put in quotes because my first shooty shooty, bang bang was an in-line muzzleloader and then jumped in to something north of a dozen guns in the last 5 years (I don’t think I am over 2 dozen, but I’ll be honest I don’t have a firm count without spending awhile thinking about it or poking through the safe and taking my socks off once I run out of fingers).

Anyway, it had not great fiber 3 dot irons. Swapped it to fiber ghost ring real quick. It’s a bit slow and painful learning to shoot a gun with irons in the summer time, with just a t-shirt and developing .30-06 recoil (didn’t think to load it light) in something that weighed 6lbs.

Got the knack by the third range trip (shot 56 shots that first trip and my shoulder HURT for a week).

What is almost funny is that for rifles I mostly don’t like irons. Of any kind. If I have to use them I am basically ghost ring/aperture sights or nothing. Handguns however, I don’t like scopes or dots on them.

I really love reading these stories.

Iron and a Tasco

The iron sights on my Winchester Model 101....then upgraded to a Tasco 4 X 15mm scope....4 was a damn lie....it was more like 1.4. LOL

Winchester mod 75. Early 60s. Every fri eve at the winchester ranges. 4 positions. 50’. Still have it.

doc.morrison said:

DanGuy wrote, "Started with a Daisy BB gun. Then my dad had me join a smallbore club at the nearby base that employed him so the Winchester 52 C became my best friend."
Check. Only the range was inside the original Silver Spring, MD, National Guard Armory. I think we were shooting rack rifles from the vault, .22 sleeved M1903s, perhaps.
That was a half century ago.
The Boys Club on Forest Glen Road had two activities worth the 2 mile walk, indoor .22RF range, and outdoor pool.
Then, there was Boy Scouts where I easily earned the Rifle Shooting merit badge at summer camp.
US Army was a few years later.....some of our training didn't use sights, they were blocked with a dowel rubber banded between front and rear sight. This was at the end of Vietnam, where point-shoot at popup silhouettes was important.

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This range was at Ft. Eustis in Virginia. I’m sure it’s long gone by now (I’m 72). I honestly don’t think it even had any ventilation. I still remember little whiffs of smoke wafting lazily up from the rifle when I opened the bolt. I used to go home and blow black snot afterwards.

calicojack said:

I really love reading these stories.

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Just wondering about your screen name, are you a fan of Calico firearms? I have an early model carbine, 50/100 capacity magazines, magazine loader, Calico branded laser, case.

My 1st gun, Sears Ted Williams Model 3T .22, with Weaver 4x scope and checkered MonteCarlo stock. Still have it. Put a leather sling on it. Looks new. I've owned it since prob Christmas 1968.
These are built by Winchester, based on their Model 190/290 series.

Stevens 22-410 under over with iron sights.

I agree with an earlier poster curious to see the age demographic breakdown for this poll, as many of us more “seasoned” shooters most likely started our shooting careers with an iron sighting system.

As per typical MDS fashion, many didn’t hesitate to not just answer the poll question as requested, but offer their unsolicited opinion that everyone must start shooting with iron sights, basically because that’s how they did it. Many threads gravitate towards this short-sighted opinion, “that’s not how I did it so you shouldn't do it that way either”. Just read any thread related to a new precision or long range type rifle that’s a little expensive.....”you should buy a cheap POS rifle and pay for training to learn the basic fundamentals of marksmanship, blah, blah, blah...”, simply because that’s what they did (and apparently for some reason you can’t learn to be a good shooter with good equipment). Sorry, rant over.....

I’m curious about the ages of the respondents because it would be more informative to know what was the most prevalent sight of the times. I’m 52 and in my formative shooting years open iron sights were the most prevalent on weapons made available to my age group/level of shooting experience. I doubt there was a conscious choice to go with irons, rather that was the most common at the time, not to mention much cheaper than adding bases, rings, and optics. Scopes were on Dad’s 30-06 deer rifle, but 22’s and the like were mostly off the shelf and iron sighted. 50 years from now I’d be interested in the statistics of this poll again, 52 year old men in 50 years may be responding that they began shooting with red dot sights, and they’d be pontificating that nobody should learn to shoot with the latest modern artificial intelligence plasma laser based optical system because they learned on red dots, and using the latest technology will “teach them bad habits” and the like. I suppose it’s just a matter of perspective.

BTW, I still enjoy some iron sight shooting, under the right conditions (lighting conditions, range backdrop, target type and size, etc...). My old eyes just can’t keep up anymore.

A couple of guys at work that got AR's immediately went to something other than irons. Half of my AR's are an irons-only setup, and I am over 60 years old. Nobody wants to bother with irons when they can get a cost-effective red dot.

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 .

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 .

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I agree 101%. However, I have not been effective trying to convince younger shooters otherwise.

I bet things stay more the same than most people would guess