Going Iron Sights for Big Game
Today the military’s standard rifle round, barring snipers and designated marksmen, is the 5.56x45mm NATO. However back in World War II, most grunts in front line service carried a .30-06 Springfield caliber battle rifle be it an M-1 Garand or M1903 bolt-action weapon and the soldiers and Marines were instructed to be able to make 500-yard shots without using any glass. These guns, especially the latter 1903s, were capable of 1,000-yard shots with iron sights and the proper end-user. In fact, the standard rear aperture sights on the M-1 are graduated to an optimistic 1,200 yards.
Aperture or peep sights work through a theory called parallax suppression. The concept goes that the human eye will immediately jump out to and focus the front sight when looking through a very small, sometimes pinhole-sized, rear sight. The smaller the peephole, or aperture, the more it will force the shooter’s pupil to focus…
