Handgun Hunting Afield

Small footprint optics are taking over the firearms industry by storm.  Reduced size, weight, and reduced mounting hardware attract shooters of all disciplines.  The long era of large optics is coming to an end for most of the industry.

History of the Dot

 

With this being Handgun Hunting Afield, obviously our main focus is handguns.  Back 30+ years ago large optics were used on competition guns.  These giant optics were only practical in race style holsters and offered little to the handgun market outside of competition and handgun hunting.

Around the year 2000 technology advanced to where smaller reflex type sights could be made.  Some of the first slide mounted reflex sights were seen around this time.  Fast forward to about 2012 and these small reflex sights became commonplace on duty, concealed carry, military, and other firearms.

But, Why Optics on a handgun?

With traditional iron sights you have to do multiple things.  Line up the front sight, rear sight, and the target all while having just the front sight post sharp and clear in your vision.  This isn’t easy and takes time to master.  If you have to do it under competition of defense stress, the difficulty skyrockets!

With a dot sight there are two basic ways to use it.  One, dot focus with a slightly out of focus target for accuracy.  Or, target focus with a slightly blurry dot for speed.  Both methods are much faster than iron sights, and more accurate.

Difficulties with the dots

One of the main difficulties users have with dots when they give them their first try is finding the dot.  The user has to develop an index.  In brief, an index is where when you draw and present the gun you are holding it in alignment so that the dot is centered in the optic.  If you didn’t know this, you were supposed to also train for that with your iron sights.  Dry fire training speeds up this learning curve with both irons and optics.

Reliability

Let’s just jump right on the problem here.  The FUDD (if you don’t know what that means use google) crowd likes to claim that you can’t trust an optic.  Let’s just put that to bed right now.  The military, law enforcement, countless competition shooters, and concealed carry folks use them.  If they can jump out of an airplane with them and win the fight, they are plenty tough.  

Most of the current production red dots have a battery life of well over one year.  Just like cleaning and maintaining your firearm, maintaining your optic is on you.  

Change the battery at regular intervals.  These batteries are not expensive and I change mine about once every 6 months in my carry and competition guns.  My hunting guns that may be exposed to the extreme cold of Wyoming for extended periods, I put a new one in after every tag I fill.

My Dot Experience

I might have been one of the first few gunsmiths to mill a slide for a dot.  Who knows; it’s almost like a handful of us started at the same time.  It was a year or two later that all of the slide milling services became commonplace.

So a few decades ago when I cut in that first dot, the reflex tech was in its infancy.  Boy did we experience some failures!  Nowadays, almost all handguns come from the factory optics ready and mounting a dot is one of the first things most people do.  Including me!

My dot experience goes a little farther back though.  In the beginning I was looking for a low light option for handgun hunting.  Iron sights tend to cut out 10-20 minutes of shooting light in the eastern woods.  I started with both Aimpoint and Ultradot tube sights and both worked about the same in the field.  Aimpoints being military tough are naturally heavier and the Ultradot was competition focused thus it was lighter.

The major downside, these sights were huge!  You either had to modify a holster or have a custom holster made to carry such an optic.  With them being so large it was difficult to justify them over a handgun scope.

As time moved on I tried all makes and models of optics over the years.  Buris, Cmore, Trijicon, and others.  The tech just kept advancing and the next best thing was around the corner.

Your focus was handgun hunting, why not a scope?

This is a logical question and it fits in well here before I dive into the current dots.  To use a magnified optic on a handgun you are required to add scope rings and a larger base.  This all adds weight.  A typical hunting revolver has 3 6-48 screws holding the optic to the gun.  The more weight you have mounted to the gun, the more likely those 3 screws are to fail.

A magnified optic is great for precision shooting from stable support.  They lose any advantage they may have as soon as you have to shoot unsupported.  Magnified optics magnify your wobble.  Your brain can not help but to try and fight that wobble.

Handgun scopes are horrible in low light.  If you have ever been hunting you know most shots take place at the beginning and end of the day.

A hunting revolver maxes out its range at about 200 yards.  While this may seem like a daunting task to you, it just takes practice.  A red dot sight is capable of extracting all the accuracy required out of a handgun to shoot 200 yards.

Magnification is a crutch for newer shooters and they often become frustrated when they have to shoot with speed or from unstable positions.

My Modern Red Dot Experience

Over the last few years I have used small foot print optics from various manufactures.  The technology gap is starting to close between them and we have some great options available to us.

In past hunting/shooting articles you will see me using Trijicon, Ultradot, Leupold, Meprolight, Cmore, and others.  What there isn’t enough written about is all the shooting I do prior to hitting the field.  Those optics are put through their paces.  Thousands of full magnum loads over a series of months.

With the tech gap closing between brands I have made a discovery.  It looks like quality red dot sights can be found from about $300 to $425 at the time this article was written.  Above that, it looks like you are paying for a name.  The tech is all in the same playing field now, and it is giving us more options than ever.

There is one exception to this statement above though.  If I was jumping out of airplanes and doing high speed stuff; that would change that dollar amount a bit as the TOUGHEST optics become necessary.  99.9% of us are not doing that kind of stuff.

Practical Use

I prefer to keep my optics set up minimalistic.  There is nothing the larger dot sights can do that a small foot print dot can not.  When I am wanting to have extreme focus on my target I can use an enclosed emitter type sight like the Steiner MPS.  This narrows my field of view and allows me to stay focused on my target more.  This would also work in competition shooting where you have lanes like bullseye.

If I am hunting or competing in tight quarters where I need peripheral vision, an open reflex is the way to go.

For concealed carry I use only open reflex designs as they give me the largest field of view possible.

The dot sights allow me to get on target quicker and to be more accurate than open sights.  Hunting, CCW, and competition can require adaptation to a moving target or multiple targets.  A dot is a clear advantage here.

Range Use

Where I see many handgun hunters and shooters struggle is expectations at the range.  Most see all of these wonderfully tight groups on the internet and think that is what they have to do.

This leads the hunting crowd towards scopes.  All we have to do is get them away from the shooting bench like we do at Handgun Hunter’s Competition and they start to see the difficulties.

A deer is not going to know the difference if you can shoot a ¾ inch group or just hit a 6-8 inch steel plate every time.  A 6-8 inch plate is roughly the size of most game animal’s vital zone.  If you can hit that plate every time at a given distance, you are good to go.  Set reasonable expectations and ignore the internet commandos.

Wrapping it up

With the majority of handguns being optics ready nowadays.  Give a dot a go.  Once you get some time behind the optic you will quickly see the advantages.  Increased speed, accuracy, and field of view all with a compact package.  Small foot print optics are here to stay.  Heck, they are even starting to dominate over larger optics in the rifle world!