how far will a good winder musket in 22 short shoot with accuracy?  how good are the original rear sights?   thanks   art

Assuming that you have a good barrel, it depends on your Winder Musket and your personal accuracy standards.  And the combination of front & rear sights has a lot to do with it.  A decent trigger helps also.

The early Winders had 1901 or 1902 Krag rear barrel sights.  That might be OK if your eyes are 18 years old and your vision is above average.  If you don't fit that category, try another rear or tang sight.

The 3rd Model, the most common, has a Lyman rear sight fastened to the right side of the action by 4 screws.  It can be adjusted with some accuracy once you get used to it.  Almost any of the Lyman-threaded apertures will fit the sight, except that the diameter of a Merit disc may be too big for gallery shooting.  It's reference marks make adjustments about as repeatable as a good tang sight.

The Winder's post front is probably better than any other military front sight.  With that front sight, you should be able to put shots into a 1" circle (maybe a bit bigger) at 50 yards and should be able to keep most everything inside the 9-ring of the NRA-type smallbore target at 100 yards.

If you switch to a front sight like a Lyman 17A, you can tighten the groups a bit.  All the Winders I have seen are D&T for a tang sight using the standard Winchester spacing.  A good tang sight (gallery or schuetzen pattern preferred for short range use) gives you about 3" additional sight radius.  That will tighten your groups.

All 3 of my Winders have scope blocks.  With a 12X Unertl and fired carefully from the bench, mine will keep CCI Target Shorts well into the 24 ring of the gallery target at 25 yards, with most of the hits in the 25-ring.  At 50 yards, almost all of the hits will stay in 3/4" (that's the 25-ring of our 100 yard target).  At 100 yards, without a lot of wind, most hits stay inside the 20-ring and all of them stay inside the 18-ring.  Maybe a few 24s or 25s.

At 200 yards, with very little wind, 25 shots went into a pattern 30" high and 6" wide.  By comparison, a Stevens-Pope with a choked bore (and the same sights) put 21 shots into a rectangle 21" high and 5 1/2" wide.

At 300 yards, again with little wind but under very wet conditions so that I could not see bullet strikes, I fired 24 shots at a WSU 200-yard target.  6 shots hit the paper, 2 in the red.

If you are going to shoot at 200 yards or more, it will pay to sort your ammo by weight and rim thickness.

Had one the chamber had been reamed and was very disappointed at the accuracy. It is at the auction house now waiting on disposal. Just hope I can get my money back.......

JMH

thanks guys   best  art