sight color

[zacharoo]

What is the best color for a front sight. It will be used in day light for hunting at 50 yards or less. Rear sight has no white out line. On a ruger blackhawk. It will be used as a back up for deer and hogs. Barrel length will be 4 5/8 inch. OLD EYES!!! I use bifokles!!!

Zacharoo

[Scibaer]

i like blaze orange or bright yellow.
 alot of sights come in white, which for me washes out in daylight or when there is snow on the ground.
i have tried several colors that the ones i mentioned have worked best for me
i bought fishing lure paint , well as paint for the old  pin style bow sights to paint over the black or white factory painted sights.

[Graybeard]

Different strokes for different folks. What one of us sees well might be invisible to another. My personal preference is for a flat black patridge front sight. Nothing works as well for me.

We had this discussion some time back and lots of handgunners chimed in on it. The consensus seemed to be that if ya just gotta have color that green worked best for more folks than any other.

Those red ramp sights or orange are just not visible to me in bright light conditions and yellow is never good for me as it is almost invisible no matter the conditions. On those occasions when someone uses it as a text color here on the forums I never have a clue what they wrote.

What you need to do is to find a way to look at several different choices and see what is most clear for you. What works for me or some other member might be the absolute worst choice for you.

[Sverre A.]

For years - I also have painted the sight.
But for a couple of years ago - I mounted fiber on all my handguns.

It`s much better than paint.

Now I can shoot/hunt with open sights again 

[Scibaer]

http://www.gboreloaded.com/forums/index.php/topic,189245.0.html
link to the green front sight discussion.

i have been using orange or yellow for long time. it works just fine for me, i do not have any color blindness, that i know about at least 
but that thread has me wondering if there is a difference between the fiber optic and other sight materials ?
and i think i should test the a few shades of green and see if there is any improvement, its easy enough to scrape off if it dont work well.

but, on my 30-30 i have a brass bead on my front sight with a williams peep in the rear, and i have not needed anything else, other then to polish up the bead every fall. maybe a strip of brass on the front sight may work too ?

[jhalcott]

  When I was into Silly Wets I tried a lot of different colors. Flat black ALWAYS seemed to work the best for ME. Those steel targets are usually set out in the bright sun, not hidden by trees or bushes. That might make a difference to YOUR eyes. I did use a Muzzle loader one year that had fiber optic front sights. They worked well enough to take a nice 8 point buck late one evening.

[Lloyd Smale]

Im with the black guys. I like a black flat faced front sight. If im having a new one made i usually spec it at .10 as this is a bit narrower then most factory sights and this allows some light to be seen between the blade and the sides of the rear sight. this works for me in low light better then any colared sight does. If i need more low light performance then that i go with trinium. I dont like fiber optics because ive had them break in the field and there ugly. I dont like colared blades because they dont do a thing in low light and wash out in bright light.

[OLDHandgunner]

When I shot Bullseye & PPC always used a sight smoker. This was the best for me. Most of my guns have a patridge sights and the flat black is best my eyes.
I've used different colors over the years on ramp sights guns. Yellow or green seem to work for me under the right conditions. But the conditions are always changing when hunting. One minute you're in the sun, then it is gone. Then your in the shadows, then you might be in snow. Each color works good in curtain conditions. So what do you do?
I guess I'll stick with smoked black sight.

[Sverre A.]

"But the conditions are always changing when hunting. One minute you're in the sun, then it is gone. Then your in the shadows, then you might be in snow"

And that`s why fiber is great 

On the shooting range - I can use whatever sight - because I use glases.
When I`m hunting - I can`t use glases which not let me see nothing else that the sight.

There is a difference between hunting and target shooting!!

[Lloyd Smale]

like i said in my earlier post the trick to it is to find a front blade narrow enough to allow a good amount of light to show between the sides of the blade and the rear sight. Fiber optic just isnt durable enough for me and between it being round which is not good for percission and the fact that when in any kind of bright light they just get so bright that theres no way to get a precise sight picture and even in fading light in my experience they only add a few minutes of usuable sight use. If you must shoot when the light is about gone trinium is the way to go. But they can be to bright too when it gets dark. What i like is the set up i have on one of my 4 inch 629s. Its a trijicon trinium front blade that is OLD and the trinium is fading. It gives off just enough light in a no light situation to be able to see it but isnt so bright that its overpowering. It probably wouldnt be the best for a self defense sight as in that situation youd want the sight to stand out more but for hunting it works great. I shot a bear with that gun out of a tree stand at about 20 yards when it was to dark to even see the rear sight. I took my normal grip and put the dot on the chest of the bear and dropped it in its tracks. A guy could probably experiment with a new trinium sight by putting a light coat of sight black on it to dim it a bit and do the same thing.

[Ken ONeill]

Zacharoo,
No one can tell you what will work best for your eyes. I prefer an undercut black patridge front sight blade, .125" wide, and of a height suitable to allow zeroing with the rear sight 1 or 2 clicks from the bottom.
For a colored front blade, I prefer a square topped (Hi-ViZ) green fiber optic blade.
A good optometrist can work with you and help you end up with a set of bifocals or progressive lenses that will aid you greatly in being able to see your sights and target.

[OLDHandgunner]

There is a difference between hunting and target shooting!!

Yes, there is a difference. I've hunted with a handgun for over 40 years and the years that I shot Bullseye & PPC made me a better handgun shooter & hunter. So my preference is mostly flat black sights for hunting.
Depending on what I'm hunting ( mostly for longer ranges ) I sometimes go to my scoped T/C's.
And my own personal opinion I don't care for the looks of the fiber optics on a six gun, but that my opinion.
As said before it is what ever works for you. Everbody's eyes are different and when you get older and wear glasses boy does that change things. And not for the better.

[SHOOTALL]

I like Black front and rear . I smoke my sights when target shooting . Black works most of the time but not all . If you wear colored shooting glases the color of your lens can affect the color choice of your sights . Low light conditins can change your needs also. As far as differences in hunting and target shooting it seems backgroung color would be of most concern as the use of color inserts etc. are to make it easy to see your sights with any background color or lighting condition .
 So why black for me , well if you shoot open sights enough and at distance longer than 50 yards enough you will find that light is a main concern . If you shoot on a cloudy day with a gun sighted in on a sunny day you will notice a change in your sights . Why ? because with less light you will hold your front sight higher so you can see it . I have shot IHMSA on days when clouds would come over and change the light in a single round of fire . If you failed to know how to adjust you missed a target or two. I tried sights that used light bars as a front sight and in self defense or shooting shotguns at clays they work well . but for persion longer range work the black sight seems to be better for me . The more light the more intense a light bar can get . Although a black sight will be harder to see in low light conditiond it never "glowes" in high light conditions . Most important thing is to learn which ever sight you tote.

[Ole Man Dan]

I've tried different colors and went back to black.
* Folks in the know will tell us that a Florescent Green is more visible even than Florescent Orange. 
I kept knocking the paint off on my holsters, so I went back to Blue steel.

BTDT: A number of years ago when Alabama first started having Black Powder hunts; I experimented with White. 
I could see it real well.  I used 'White Out' on the front sight. 
I went to Skyline Management Area, and it snowed...