Buckhorn Sights

Walnut Hill

- Terry Wieland

No sight in the history of rifle shooting has been so roundly condemned as the open rear blade generally known as the “Rocky Mountain” or “buckhorn.” It’s known by other names, too, most of them unprintable. It has been around forever, and forever it has been reviled as not only poor for sighting a rifle, but an actual hindrance. Some riflemen even insist you’d be better off with no rear sight at all.

For those who have not had the pleasure, the buckhorn sight is fitted into a dovetail slot at the rear of the barrel. Instead of a simple leaf with a little ‘V’ notch, however, it has great soaring “ears” on each side, like the antlers of a red stag – hence the name. These ears blot out the surrounding countryside as well as most of the target while contributing nothing, allegedly, to the positioning of the front sight. In low light, they actually make it harder to see the front bead.

There is a slightly modified version called the “semi-buckhorn,” the ears of which only go up about half as far but get in the way almost as much. If this was supposed to assuage the critics, it did not. I could quote many authorities but will limit myself to just one: Jack O’Connor wrote, “The worst open sight is the Rocky Mountain buckhorn or semi-buckhorn sight which blots out about three-fourths of the game, as these sights have big ‘horns’ or ‘ears’ sticking up on either side of the ‘U’ or ‘V’. Exactly what the function of those horns was supposed to have been in the first place, except to look fancy, I have not been able to dope out in forty years of melancholy brooding.”

But here’s the thing: Making a buckhorn sight is considerably more complicated and expensive than a simple standing leaf, so there must have been a reason and, one assumes, a good one.