Great Plains Rifle

[Rocklock]

Skinner has a Thompson Center sight  skinnersights dot com

[RobD]

pardon for resurrecting a slightly old thread.

peep sights are **SO** much more consistently accurate than u/post sights, but perhaps not so good for early 18th century warfare where there was little aiming required of the weapon of the day - the smoothbore.  buffalo hunters of the early to mid 19th century used them on both cap and flint lock rifles to down far off plains bison.  moving from caplocks to bpcr long guns, the simple peep got a major upgrade with vernier tang and soule windage, and then a hooded front globe.

[Geezer in NH]

For most competition they use the NMLRA rules. They don't make sense at times to me.

[rollingb]

Don't know why peeps can't be used, they were invented and used 15 centuries before gunpowder. Guess that wasn't primitive enough;-)

I'd be interested in seeing some pictures, of peep sights that were invented and used on rifles 15 centuries before gunpowder.  

[Semisane]

Well, maybe not 15 centuries   , but some early crossbows (before gunpowder) had peep sights.

[rollingb]

Until I see peep sights actually documented as being used on early "muzzleloaders", I will remain skeptical of such an idea.  

If peep sights can be readily documented on ancient crossbows,... I would think it should be even easier to document "peeps" on early muzzleloaders.

[Semisane]

[rollingb]

Percussion half-stocked Hawkens are hardly considered "early muzzleloaders",... but despite that, the rifles pictured (though likely made around very late-1830's, or even 1850's),.... the aperture sight's "origin" is much more likely to be a decade or two after the rifle was made (which would place the sight's date somewhere around 1850's-1860's), much past the "pre-1840" cut-off date used for NMLRA competition.

I'd gladly like to see earlier dates documented, as I like aperture sights myself.