MOST boys who grow up on a farm learn to shoot before their tenth birthday, usually with the family air rifle (in my case a pre-1920 BSA underlever), then progressing to Dad’s .22 (a Brno) and finally graduating to a centre-fire hunting rifle for their first ‘big game’ (Uncle Keith’s 7x57 Musgrave on a blesbuck). In most cases though, the lessons learnt while shooting starlings and mouse-birds in the orchard with an open-sighted air rifle, are soon forgotten once you get a taste for telescopic sights.
For those fortunate enough to have been involved with school Bisley-style target shooting, the reliance on telescopic sights might have been delayed for a while, but eventually nearly all the biltong hunters you’ll meet around campfires, at shooting ranges, or hanging about in gun shops, hunt with scopes. Nowadays, most out-of-the-box rifles don’t even have iron sights fitted. They get in the way of the telescopic sights that will inevitably cost as much, if not more, than the rifle. Scopes are to hunting rifles what microwave ovens are to kitchens, not absolutely
