We mentioned in the intro that compound bows were at one time the most popular type of bow in archery, but they’re far from your only option.
Lots of bows are made with peep sights built-in, but if yours isn’t, we’ll talk a little bit later about how to install a peep sight. Okay, where do you find your archery peep sight anyway? The sight is right on your bowstring.
One point of note is that the smaller the peep sight, the less well it works in any other conditions but bright light. If you’re more of a bowhunter, a sight that’s 1/4 th inches will suffice. These sights are a favorite of target hunters due to the sight’s stunning precision.
The smallest peep sights are 1/32 inches. Outside of sight thickness, you can also select from a variety of sizes for your archery peep sight. A thick sight offers more precision while a thinner sight allows for faster focusing. Others, while still tubeless, are made somewhat thicker. Not all sights are necessarily as thin as ghost sights though. These sights are so streamlined that they’re practically invisible. Tubeless peep sights have become the norm, enough so that some sights are known as ghost rings. The tension on the string still allowed the archer to look through the peep sight as they do today, but the process was admittedly more complex. By enwrapping the peep sight in a tube, the sight would rotate as needed when the archer pulled back their bowstring. In the early days of peep sights, many apertures came with tubes. How? The act of looking through the smaller aperture increases your field of view, sharpening your foreground and background images and reducing how much light your eye detects. The third reason that peep sights are highly regarded among some archers is that you can lessen the light exposure your eye sees. Use the peep sight correctly for the best results. Your sight radius decreases as well as your field of view. The peep sight now becomes a point in which your eye will try to focus, but not as easily as the eye can do so when the peep sight is closer to your face. Yet this causes the very obstruction you’re trying to avoid for several reasons. You might think that accuracy in archery entails keeping your eyes as unobstructed as possible, which would mean looking through a peep sight from a distance. In layman’s terms, you’ll shoot better than foregoing a peep sight. Since the diameter of your pupil is larger than the peep sight, your eye defaults the peep sight as your entrance pupil within your optical system. That’s due to what’s referred to as parallax suppression. Now the reticle is outside of your optical axis, leading to a floating sensation that can wreck your firing accuracy. With parallax shift, the reticle fibers or lines in an optical device’s eyepiece can move out of alignment with your target image if you move your head or your eye even slightly. In any field where using sights is common–which includes guns as well as archery–parallax shift can occur. Three things happen when you look through a peep sight that can improve your archery game. Yet whether archers like them or not, a peep sight’s effectiveness is nondebatable. Others think peep sights are only for beginners. Some archers call them unsportsmanlike and unprofessional. This should make accurate firing easier.Īrchers of all experience levels will use peep sights, although–as we discussed in this article–there’s a subset of archers who don’t like these sights. By looking through the ring, the idea is that your eye will focus automatically on the middle of your target. A peep sight is nothing more than a small ring or circle that comes in various thicknesses. They’re an optional archery aid designed to help you shoot more precisely and consistently. Peep sights are also referred to as aperture sights. You won’t want to miss it! What Is a Peep Sight? Where Do You Find It? We’ll even share some peep sight maintenance tips and discuss whether you should go with or without a sight. This guide will teach you everything you need to know about peep sights, from where they’re located on your compound bow, the types, how to install one, and how to use the sight. Peep sights will lower your margin of error for more accurate shots, even among beginners. casual shooting) and how much natural light you have. To use a peep sight in archery, choose a sight that’s sized correctly based on the archery activity (hunting vs. You’re new to archery and you want to make the most of your peep sight, but how? If you’re among that group, then you may use a peep sight with your compound bow for reliable, accurate shots. The Archery Trade Association, in 2015, said that out of 23.8 million archers, 62 percent favored compound bows.