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Greener writes of one example: “A favourite back-sight with South African sportsmen is the combined leaf, and tangent sight, for it is suitable both for game-shooting and target practice.” This Cape Sight had two folding leaves along with a standard plate for ranges up to 300 yards plus an adjustable slide for shooting up to 1,000 yards.

Our own Lyman Company had a big hand in viable early iron sights, including a popular double-leaf model. Both leaves were regulated for the same elevation. But one was open V while the other was straight bar with ivory reference triangle. Lyman’s Sporting Tang Sight was joined by the company’s No. 1 aperture or “peep.” Lyman continues to offer precision micrometer aperture sights, such as the Model 66-A, friendly on the Model 94 Winchester with quarter-minute “clicks.” The dizzying variety of iron sight choices that lay before the 19th century shooter continues today.

Match rifles of the early 1900s were privy to countless options, including the Orthoptic Back-sight with Vernier Scale and Lyman’s Disc Peep for Match Shooting. Greener had his own Orthoptic Wind-gauge aperture sight plus a Miniature Cadet Sight. He also introduced a front sight that flipped to combine barleycorn and bead, barleycorn being a thick upside down V. My mentor Jack O’Connor, writing on the subject, corralled iron sights into four categories. Rear sights he noted as a notch in V or U shape “cut in a piece of iron.” Jack included the hole or peep sight, adding a flat un-notched bar with white centerline stripe (rare). Finally, he applauded the Patridge sight – not the first-day-of-Christmas bird in the pear tree but named for E.E. Patridge who developed the design in the 1880s for exhibition shooting—a square rear notch optically matched to a flat-topped blade front sight.