Tomorrow is the first day of grouse hunting season 2014. That is why I took my good old Winchester, the lever action cutie, and went to a shooting range. I really liked to look through the lowered sights I made during the last year. There is no doubt about how I should position the sights in short distances, just lower the front sight to keep it barely visible, and then locate a target behind the tip of the sight. Because I lure hazel grouses really close to me in dense thickets, I don’t anymore need to worry about the changing aiming spot, just find the hole through the forest and always aim the same way. Of course, I can blame myself if I have shaky hands, which can be seen from the coming photos as a couple of escaped bullets 😀 But yeah, tomorrow after work I’m going straightly to forest, hike there over night and hunt during dusk and dawn, then go back to work after a shower 🙂
As a reminder, here is the illustration from the earlier post about what I did for my iron sights. By lowering both the rear and front sights, the bullet and the line of sight goes nicely parallel in short distances. Good feature for quick shots in dense thickets, when the game comes really close to you. For longer distances, not so common in hunting hazel grouses, one should compensate the fall and possible wind drift of the light bullet.
Yup, it’s a paper, and I got it! I moved the targets and shot from many distances, the aiming spot was always exactly the same in the range I used. According to my GPS, the distance was maximally just over 20m. That is already enough for hazel grouses.
Of course, there is always that one bullet…
Always 😀
The aims look something like this, the front sight is still a little bit too high. The only two problems are the occasional glares from the rear parts of the housing, and the blurriness because of the short barrel. If the sights would be farther away, it would be easier to change the focus between a target and the irons. And yeah, the home made front sight is maybe too roundish for seeing the exact hitting spot for longer distances, which, by the way, becomes also covered by the sight. On the other hand, the front sight is not so sensitive to mechanical impacts, as a tip of a needle would be.
Putting new cartridges in the tubular magazine.
Enough confidence for me.
Time to go home 🙂