TargetTalk

Hi Shooters, is there a typical relationship between the width of the front sight to the width of the rear sight notch opening?

Thanks, John

It depends on so many variables that a fixed relationship is not possible for all shooters.

I would normally suggest that shooters use the smallest amount of gap either side of the front sight that allows the gap not to disappear on either side when they are on aim. I hope that makes sense.

John:

There are acutally many different things to consider; I will humbly offer a couple of important points.

There is a big tradeoff between the "precision" and "usefulness" of the visual sight picture. Oddly enough, a "tighter" sight picture may seem to be inherently better, but the narrow sights will "amplify" the amount of apparent error, while wider sights will tend to "mask" the amount of apparent error.

The distance between the front and rear sights works much the same way. A longer distance between sights will amplify error, and the shorter ditance will mask error.

If error is magnified, a shooter will generally have great difficulty in committing to the shot. The sights will *never* look good enough to release the shot, and the shooter will develop a terminal case of the Chicken Finger. This will make the process of shooting difficult . . . even worse, it will prevent the shooter from refining or improving their ability to shoot up to there potential.

At the ridiculous extreme (sights 1" apart, 1" tall, and 3" of white space between front and rear sights) the shooter will not see any apppreciable error and will happily plink away in the general direction of downrange. The problem here is obvious.

A rule of thumb espoused by some world class shooters, and formalized by Don Nygord with respect to visual sight picture:

- front sight equal in width to target
- top of front sight 1/3 target diameter below bottom edge of target
- 1/3 width of target amount of white on either side of front sight

These ratios seem to provide sufficient "precision" for shooting perfect scores, while not inhibiting the natural subconscious process of releasing hte shot.

Steve