Help Wanted Focus through Peep Sights

[sfurby]

Hi,

After starting shooting again after many years, I am having problems using peep sight at 25 yards. Full bore at longer range is OK with iron sights. I wear varifocals lenses day to day and use single vision for the small bore stuff, i also use a club rifle and intermittently cannot focus on the target. So I following questions:

If and when I purchase a rifle and it is set up for me will this help ?
How do other people cope with this and should I purchase a pair of shooting specs ?


Stephen

[demonloop]

If you wear glasses, you would need a set of shooting frames with a lens inserted for your prescription. It's best to seek an optician with a knowledge of shooting who will understand the focal length needed.

Do you release your shots focused on the target/foresight; from reading your post it would seem target?

[martini1215]

I use and AHG lensholder which I got from Bedfordshootingsupplies it attaches to the rearsight and you put a prescription lens into the holder,all the parts needed apart from the lens are int he pack when you get it
https://www.bedfordtargetsupplies.co...dex.shopscript if you look in product overview rearsight accessories its the first thing which pops up,I use this at 25,50 and 100 yards the webpage has a good picture of how it attaches

[BigAl]

You will never be able to foucus properly on both the front sight ring and the target. If you are still quite young (in your early 20's usually) you may have enough accmodation so that it apperas that both are in focus, but this can lead to eye strain after a while. You should be aiming (no pun intended) to keep the front sight ring in sharp focus, allowing the aiming mark to blur slightly (or a lot as you get older). That is why it is important for you to speak to an optician who knows about target shooting. Either that or take your rifle sights with you when you go to see your optician and discuss your needs. You really need a lens that will enable you to comfortably focus at about 6 feet. The other thing that is important is to tell your optician that it is very important for you to have even very minor Astigmatism corrected in your shooting lens.
I have always suffered from an Astigmatism inmy aiming eye, the problem being that it becomes worse as I use the eye for aiming. At the start of a shoot the target appears round by the end of about 30 shots the target (and fore sight ring) starts to look like an apostophe! Very difficult to get properly corrected.

Alan

[AD_K]

Absolutely no offence meant... everything written above is great advice.

However... if you are getting on a bit in years.. Then perhaps consider moving towards another solution. Try out a telescopic sight and see if it works for you.

A lot of the more senior gentlemen in our club have moved away from peep sights to low mag / high mag scopes.

HTH

AD_K

[demonloop]

I use and AHG lensholder which I got from Bedfordshootingsupplies it attaches to the rearsight and you put a prescription lens into the holder,all the parts needed apart from the lens are int he pack when you get it
https://www.bedfordtargetsupplies.co...dex.shopscript if you look in product overview rearsight accessories its the first thing which pops up,I use this at 25,50 and 100 yards the webpage has a good picture of how it attaches

Great bit of kit, but remember its illegal in comps playing to ISSF rules, if thats relevant.

[BigAl]

AD_K that is a good solution to the problem as long as you are not trying to shoot NSRA prone competitions. The NSRA rules only allow the use of telescopic sights in a few any sights matches, otherwise it is iorn sights only.
Actually the distance to the target when using apeture sights should make no difference to the sight picture if the angular size of the aiming mark is constant. I know the NRA aiming marks though are generally a bit smaller than the NSRA ones. You should though be focusing on the foresight at all times. That actually applies when using Apeture or Open sights.

Alan

[RobinC]

Hi Stephen
The simple answer is yes, get shooting glasses and then visit a shooting experienced optician, that is the difficult bit, you will probably need to go to Bisley for that, but there are some other ones out there. If you use a regular optician there is very good guidance on the Knobloch Schiessbrillen web site which you can direct them too. The guidance is roughly that for rifle shooting the lens should be at long distance prescription, but you do need good focus on the foresight.
My wife was very short sighted and shot at international level with shooting glasses set to marginally short of long prescription. She recently had cataract ops in both eyes and wishing to restart shooting she had a long discussion with the consultant on lens selection for the right eye. She now has 20/20 long vision in both eyes, and requires only subtle reading glasses, and shooting? He used a slightly different lens for the right eye which has maintained 20/20 long vision but it has given her a perfect sight picture focusing on the foresight, is that dedication to a sport!
Have you tried using a larger foresight? In fullbore there is just one diagram so people are inclined to set element size on what gives the best picture, at 25 yds the picture can break into the other diagrams but I would try experimenting with element size and using a much larger element, also peepsight rear aperture size adjustment.
Best regards
Robin

[wonky donky]

It always a good idea to use shooting glasses if you have defective vision, even if it's so slight your optician would not normally advise correcting it.

Slight astigmatism is a defect not normally corrected, especially if you have no other vision defect, but it is important to correct for shooting.

Even if you have the correct shooting lens there is no guarantee you will not still have the same problem. A blurred sight picture can be the result of many things other than defective vision;- lighting, tiredness, problems with the extended sightline just to 3!

[sfurby]

Thanks for all the comments, I suspect when next at Bisley will have to get my eyes looked at
Funnily enough last time I shot the sight was ok, however my shooting wasn't

Stephen

[BigAl]

Stephen we all have days like that, for me they seem to happen more often than not these days.
Wonky in reply to your last question, I have ME so get tired very quickly anyway. It is a much more complicated condition than most people realise. It could quite easily have been a one off incident, or could be a new problem that I will have to learn to deal with; I just don't know yet.

Alan