Archery Sights - Selection Guide

While you can shoot a compound bow, longbow or recurve bow without a bow sight, it isn't easy, particularly as the distance to your target increases. But with good archery sights, even beginning archers can develop good accuracy.

Using bow sights for all types of archery, is getting more popular than ever, as the increased accuracy makes it generally more enjoyable and easier to shoot.

There are a huge variety of archery sights available for target archery, 3D, field archery and bow hunting, the designs and brands are endless. Most modern archery bows come fitted with some kind of bow sight or mounting holes for one.

A typical fiber optic 3-pin sight is an example of a bow hunting sight that functions great, is easy to adjust, and is suitable for most recreational archery applications. These usually cost around $50 and up and install very easily on the bows riser.

But not all archery sights are simple. You can get bow sights that are very complex, like target archery sights and that have lots of added features. The more expensive sights may have features like fiber optics, magnification lens scopes, anti-vibration technology, drilled and tapped precise micro adjustments.

These bow sights may be made of machined aluminium instead of plastic. One extra on complex mounts, especially on bow hunting sights, is the so-called gang adjustment, which means that all three of the pins in the archery sight can be moved at one time. Usually this is done by loosening a screw and sliding the housing to a different position.

Some archery sights, however, have a micro-adjustment feature that allows gang windage (side-to-side) and elevation (up-and-down) adjustments to be made by turning a knob. Micro-adjusts are very precise, but can be costly, especially in some top quality archery target sights.

If you are outfitting a basic bow hunting rig, you don't need to get the most complex target archery sight available. But, if your bow rig is going to be subjected to rugged conditions, then a basic plastic model may not be the best choice either.

Generally target archers will normally have more precise micro adjustments in their bow sights, while bow hunters generally will have a more robust simple bow sight.

For most field uses, a solid aluminium machined sight with fiber optics and simple adjustability will usually do fine for bow hunting. A good midrange (referring to price) will offer a selection of some of the most useful premium features without making it too complicated or expensive.

For those who participate in 3D archery competitions (or for bow hunters who require a specialized design), an archery bow sight with more premium features may be totally worth the investment. To help you choose, here are some of the types of sights and popular features and options they include.

Fixed Pin Archery Sights

Fixed pin sights are the most popular type of sight for bow hunting. There are two basic options for mounting the sight to the riser of the bow. A hard mount is attached directly to the riser, while a dovetail system is a little different. With a dovetail system, you have a two-piece mounting design consisting of a metal bracket attached to the riser and a sight bracket that holds the sight and can attach or detach easily and quickly by sliding and clamping into or out of the main bracket.

A fixed pin sight usually has 3 to 5 pins, each of which can be set for a known distance. The top pin adjusts for the closest distance, and the lower pins adjust for longer distances. When they are set, the pins are tightened and remain fixed during use. Fixed pin sights are simple to set up and adjust, though there is some trial and error to it. But they are extremely reliable and easy to use when you're in the field. These are perfect for the archer who likes to have the control and take the time to set each pin exactly right.

Movable Pin Bow Sights

Movable pin sights will usually only have a single pin, and it is adjusted before each shot. These sights have levers, brackets, or worm gears that slide the housing of the entire sight up and down, adjusting the pin for any distance in a matter of seconds.

At the back of the sight bracket, there is a small, adjustable pointer indicating the yardage along a graduated scale on which each mark is a known yardage. That means that if you have a target that's 35 metres or yards away, you just move the pointer to the 35 metre or yard mark before shooting. So, unlink fixed-pin sights with individual pins set for certain distances, movable pin sights can be adjusted to any distance by moving the pointer. They are popular for target archers and some dedicated bow hunters.

Most users of movable pin sights mark off yardage in 5 to 10 metre or yard increments and then compensate for the yardages that fall in between. Even with the compensation, these type of archery sights are very accurate in adjusting yardages, giving movable pin sights an advantage over fixed pin sights.

Fiber Optic Bow Sight

Fiber optic pins are very popular in modern archery bow sights. Fiber optic bundles are used to carry digital information over very long distances. Each fiber in a fiber optic bundle is a strand of optically pure plastic or glass coated in a substance called cladding. The cladding reflects the light back into the core of the fiber. When the cable is exposed to light, the light is effectively trapped in the fiber all the way through to the end of the fiber. The effect is that the tip of the cable appears to light up. The longer the fiber optic cable, the more light it can gather, and hence, the brighter the tip looks.

Bow hunting with fiber optic pins on the bow sights make for great aiming points.

Even in low light situations, the glowing tip of the fiber optic cable is easily visible, greatly assisting the shooter in aiming. Most of the time, fiber optic pins have 0.5 to 2.0 inches of fiber, and it is usually situated wrapped around the base of the sight pin. Believe it or not, this is enough to provide a marked increase in the visibility of the pin.

Some archery manufacturers incorporate long fibres (one to two feet) for each pin, which gives an outstandingly bright pin that almost looks like it glows in the dark. While this may sound ideal, it is possible for a pin to be so bright as to be distracting, with halo or starburst effects that can actually throw your aim off. So don't automatically assume that longer fiber gives you a better pin in the archery sights.

There are also bow sights made for elevated shooting called pendulum bow sights. These sights are used by some American bow hunters hunting from tree stands.

So, some of the basics you need to look at when choosing an archery bow sight are fixed pin versus movable pin sights, and fiber versus non-fiber pins, this will also depend if you are target shooting or bow hunting.

Most modern archery sights have fiber optic pins, which are great, but make sure you choose a sight with a length of fiber that's long enough to give you a good spot of light in twilight or dawn situations, but that isn't so long as to create a distracting halo or starburst effect.