hunting in low light

[elkslayer]

hello i'm new to the sight and relatively new to traditional muzzleloader hunting.

My question is do any of you have any tricks for being able to more easily see your iron sights as it gets dark during an evening hunt. What type of sights do you have? style? what metal they are made of?

Recently I was hunting and could still see deer but could barely see my sights when I took aim. I made the shot, and will post pics when I get them from my buddies camera.

 

[tg]

I have always like to use period type sights so I tried target practice on life sized deer targets painted as close to "deer" color as poosibel and I think it did help aquire the sight picture better/faster sine going strictly to a front sight only fusil and 40-50 yd range limit it is a bit easier than with the two sighted rifles, at some pint it will become a matter of trading off on the PC/HC type sights to something more tolerant of low light or only taking very close shots at any rate the choice should result in the best chances of as clean kill, no desire for historical correctness can justify knowingly using something that greatly increases the chance of only wounding a Deer as I see it.

 

[George]

Most of my hunting guns have silver blade front sights. An original smooth rifle has a very light colored brass barleycorn front sight. With all those guns I can manage to see the sights in pretty dim light, close enough to legal shooting time so as not to matter.

My smoothbore has a front sight only, made of browned iron, of the turtle type. That one disappears in dim light more than the others. I paint the back side of that one with white acrylic paint, both the horizontal base and the vertical blade, and that does a good job for me. Acrylic paint sticks pretty well to the metal, but it can be popped off if you want.

Spence

 

[Stumpkiller]

My front sight is German silver. Before a hunt I soot it up with a candle flame. Makes it a very non-glare black - great for daylight (and target shooting). When it gets to be dusk and I hear the patter of little hooves I wipe off the soot and now have a shiney silver front blade.

 

[roundball]

For that very reason, I went to a wider .080" front sights and also apply high visibility white paint to the blade.
Much easier to pick it up quickly and see it under first / last low light conditions.

 

[hoochiepapa]

I leave the area before it gets that dark, just because I hunt alone, and don't like to wrestle an elk to gut it by myself, or pack something out in the dark.

 

[hanshi]

I always paint my front sights with flat white paint. This keeps it from glaring like a silver or even brass blade will do. And in the dark woods it shows up like a beacon. Even when it's too dark to see a deer I can still see the front sight enough to aim well. Paint like I use rubs off easily so has to be touched up a couple times during the season.

 

[Spikebuck]

The guns I use for big game all have a T/C tang peep (of course this isn't going to be traditional, especially on a flintlock) with a 9/64 aperture which gives a good balance between accuracy at longer ranges and light transmission through the peep. The aperture is not the standard T/C one; rather it has a brass insert around the hole which helps eliminate the "ghost shadow" usually seen and seems to also brighten up the transmission.

For a front site, I've found a "teardrop" shaped silver blade will almost "glow" at the very peak with light reflection as the sun goes down or is just coming up. It's kind of amazing to me, but I'm pretty simple! I have used front sites that are "flat" up and down facing the shooter then slope away and they don't seem to get that "shine" at the peak in angled light. I paint that type white. In Minnesota we're legal from 1/2 hour before sunrise to 1/2 hour after sunset, and unless it's really cloudy, which costs me perhaps 10 minutes on each end of the day, I am good to go from beginning to end.

 

[hellerodsyahoo.com]

I use a piece of rock that is just like white chalk. My iron front blade has a serrated rear side that faces me and I just "chalk" the rear of the front blade and it really helps in low light .

 

[BrownBear]

I use a piece of rock that is just like white chalk.

Sounds like a good idea. Lacking the chalk and not wanting a white sight all the time, I use "white out" for typewriter correction. A little bottle takes up no space in the bag. When the light levels come up enough to where the white is a problem (or it snows), I just flick the white off the sight with my thumbnail.

 

[Walks with fire]

I hunt PA and lots of the shooting comes right at dusk because our deer are heavily pressured in season. I use TC rifles and use their fiber optic sights on my rifles. They work great in our dark woods but will glimmer a bit in direct sun but it's not so much to be a problem.

There are many white dot front sights that will fit a 3/8" dovetail and they would be ok if fiber optics were not legal or you don't like them.

I guess if I were going to use a longrifle with fixed sights I would just accept the challenge of the original rifle design so I could get a feeling for what it was like for the old time shooters.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

My front sight is German silver. Before a hunt I soot it up with a candle flame. Makes it a very non-glare black - great for daylight (and target shooting). When it gets to be dusk and I hear the patter of little hooves I wipe off the soot and now have a shiney silver front blade.

I don't use soot but I do use the same front sight blade type, as I have found that in low light the silver stands out. Never had a problem with "glare" coming off of it. I had wider front sight posts, but at 100 yards it was like looking over the top of a 2x4 to center it on the spot where I wanted the ball to hit. I have always found thin front sights allow me to get the most accuracy out of a barrel.

As I age...., well we will see if I have to swap out to larger blades. I will try the soot trick at the range and see what it does for me. We used that trick in the middle of a summer day in the Corps at the rifle range, especially at 500 yard targets. :grin:

LD

 

[Stumpkiller]

Never had a problem with "glare" coming off of it.

I get terrible glare in sunlight with the as is silver. The tendency is to shoot towards the sun as that side's glare is brighter.