Handgun Hunting Afield

My aging eyes have made factory iron sights fuzzy and sometimes with the shorter barrels become downright unusable.

Putting on a magnified optic definitely solves that problem but comes with its own set of issues, it not only magnify the target but magnifies my movement.

Now red dots have been around a long time and UltraDot has been around since the early 1980s. I have used UltraDot on other pistols and they have always been a solid product and have taken whatever recoil I’ve subjected them too.

I figured why not try them on my pistol/rifle pair.

I received their new MatchDot 2 one with a red dot and one with a green dot. These come with 4 different dot sizes and 2 different reticle options. They have 11 brightness settings with an Off position between every on position, which is very handy when you can be one click away from your most used setting instead of going all the way around. The tube diameter is 30mm to allow as much light in as possible and windage/elevation adjustments are 1
MOA per click.

Mounting them was pretty straight forward with everything required supplied in the box minus the bases for my specific firearm.

With everything mounted and batteries installed it was time to grab some 357 Magnum ammo and head to the range. Zeroing both optics at 25 yards was a simple anffair and soon I was banging steel. I had steel set up at 25 and 50 yards and then I’d back up 25 yards at a time until I maxed out at 150 yards, farthest I could go where I was at.

I know the 357 Magnum doesn’t have the recoil like the big boomers but it can be a little snappy sometimes but the red dot took it without missing a beat. The lever gun in 357 with a dot on top of it is just plain FUN! Minimal recoil and banging steel at speed makes me think I can actually shoot.
The MatchDot 2 has a target turret knob and it worked perfectly and was repeatable. With
the dot on the revolver it was simple to dial up at distance instead of using a Kentucky windage holdover. I chose the 25 yard zero so I could utilize the target turret and I wasn’t disappointed.

I wish I had more time with these so I could take them to my local long range and shoot out to 500 yards or so, just for junk science.

I was shooting on public land here in the Black Hills and there’s always someone else around. I spied a guy sitting in his vehicle and I waved him over and asked if he wanted to shoot this combo?

Of course he said yes, I mean who wouldn’t want to shoot somebody else’s gun & ammo.
After about a minute of instruction on how to shoot a revolver resting the grip on my small bag rest and a couple dry fires so he could get use to the trigger and he was set.

Random range guy made first round impacts out to 100yds with the revolver and had a boatload of fun with the lever gun, I heard him giggle.

He said he didn’t even own a revolver because he could never shoot them that well but the red dot made all the difference, he was really impressed with his 50 yard group and said you could actually hunt with revolvers.

After a few minutes he thanked me and said he had to leave but before he left he took pictures of both sights and said he had to get one.

Now the question everyone is going to ask which one did I like the best? For me the green dot had a little bit of starring effect; read aging eyes above.

The random range guy didn’t have any issues with it and I think he liked it better, everyones eyes are different.

The glass on the green dot to MY eyes had a slight pink tint but it wasn’t bothersome and didn’t affect function; just something I noticed.
I’ve shot red dots for so long that maybe I prefer them more, this was the first time I’ve used a green dot.

Now there has been plenty of experienced folks who have written about how good UltraDot is so I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here, just giving my opinion. My opinion is you need a setup like this, whichever color is your favorite you can’t go wrong.

I have to box these up and return them to the person I borrowed them from but I will be placing an order soon for two of these.

See Y’all on the Range