This is one of those topics where there definitely isn’t only one way to adjust your sights. In fact there are many, many types of sights. Open sights and peep sights are two popular types used on traditional muzzleloaders. My experience is primarily with open fixed sights, but the things that I’m recommending are useful will all types of sights.
The best shooters that I know have a unique gun for each type and distance of shooting. Swamp barreled rifles are excellent off hand rifles due to the balance that they have. Off hand rifles also need to be light enough that you can hold it steady and swamped barrels are lighter. Bench and chunk guns are generally heavier and setup for longer distance shooting.
If you are using one gun for various distance shooting, like I do, than you typically adjust your load to give you similar results at each distance.
Many traditional muzzleloaders have a blade for the front sight, which is the grey square in the image above. The rear sight is the black area above. The setup you see above is sighted at the center of the target. With a muzzleloader rifle this should be the maximum distance that you plan on using the gun. I may set this for 50 or 100 yards depending upon the rifle. Some shooters aim at 6 O’clock when shooting at 15, 25, or 30 yards. This can work well if you can keep track of how many inches below center is your 6 O’clock. The reason this is done is because you have to see your target when you aim. If you sight your gun at center at 25 yards, you will have to aim high on a target at 50 or 100 yards. That doesn’t work well because you must completely cover the target and you can’t see exactly how high your aiming over the target.
So if you want to use one gun for various distance shooting, I recommend you sight it in at 25 yards at 6 o’clock and then adjust the powder load and aim point as you shoot at longer distances.
Someday I would like to learn how to shoot my muzzleloader at 200 yards plus, but I will probably have to get a special rifle for that.
Update 4-25-2020:
It was suggested to me that you can adjust the front blades position, up or down, while keeping the target in sight, to adjust for distances. So here is how this would work.
The bottom image shows using the 6 o’clock hold. Let’s say that you want your muzzleloader setup for 25-100 yard shooting range. Sight in using the bottom image for 50-60 yards. By lowering the front blade like the top first image, you could use this sight pattern for 25 yards. By raising the front blade, like the 2nd top image, you could shoot at 100 yards. The 3rd and 4th image show how you can adjust for windage using the gap to the left and right of the front blade. If you wanted to go out to longer distances, you would just adjust the front blade higher. This is a great way to adjust for a variety of conditions, but you must practice to see how your gun responds to each setup.
