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Red Dot vs Iron Sights for Bullseye

matt

matt

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I've been contemplating getting a red dot for my Ruger MKII. This is a pistol I use for bullseye. This is what I see as pro-con:

Pro: potentially better scores. pretty obvious. It is not clear to me what I should expect for improvement. I don't expect it to take care of my fliers, but I'm hoping for reduced grouping around the 10 ring.

Con: I like simple, and part of me feels like I should just suck it up and do what I have to do to hit the 10 ring consistantly with the iron sights.

I want to join a bullseye league this fall (Worcester County Bullseye out of Lunenburg) and I expect pretty much everyone will have a reddot of some sort.

So what do you all think? Is it reasonable to expect improved scores? I'm typicly scoring ~80-85 for slow, timed, and rapid fire now, driven in large part by 2-3 shots per segment that fly out to 5-6 ring.
 
Get an 1" UltraDot. It isn't that much of an investment, you can always go back to work on iron sights. Your scores will go up because you can zero easier, not worry about sight alignment, and concentrate more on the breaking and calling of the shot. The dot bounces around like crazy though so there is a learning curve. Going from Ruger sights to something with Bo-Mars might also improve your scores.

I'm thinking about .22 Bullseye to try again over the Winter.
 
The older your eyes get, the more you'll like a decent red-dot sight. If I focus on the front sight, I can't even see the target any more. I suppose I could try an aperture sight, but both the gun and shooting position would look a bit unorthodox. (No more so than a lot of IPSC and IDPA rigs, though.)

Ken
 
matt said:
That is a skill I have not mastered yet. Try as I might, I just can't do it... I'll think "oh, that landed at ~6oclock, just a little low" and there will be a new hole at 11 in the 6 ring!

Any advice on this would be a help too!
Click to expand...

Do you blink when the shot fires? I was doing that for a long time. It made calling my shots very difficult. Once I got out of that habit I could watch the front sight track up and back down. It made for a dramatic improvement in my shooting as I got immediate feedback on each shot.

I noticed that I didn't blink when someone else fired a gun, even when I was right next to them. I could watch the slide reciprocate and the muzzle lift. To get out of the habit I just shot the gun: no target, not focused on the front sight, just putting some rounds into the berm. Firing a gun, especially a .22, is not a big enough event that you need to blink. Then, I gradually focused more and more on the gun and then the front sight.

While I still miss plenty I now know exactly where I missed. [grin]
 
I was in the Merrimack Valley Pistol League for quite a few years. I remember when I started shooting all the verterans told me to shoot for one season with iron sights before I jumped to a red dot. Since I was new to pistol/competition shooting I took theie advice. My first season, with a lot of practice, I saw improvement. My scores went up even more after I got the red dot.
 
THe greatest advantage to the "red dot" is that it tends to even out all the lighting issues within indoor ranges. Many ranges have great light on the target and little or no light on the sights, this draws your eye off the sight and on to the target, not a good thing. I love iron sights, but found in league shooting that the lighting from one club to the next changed so dramaticaly that I never could get the performance I wanted. With the dot you look at the dot and it is much brighter than the target. I also think that for many it eliminates or streamlines some of the sighting process. The dot has kept many shooters with older eyes in the game, and brought some back who had left. Greg
 
Greg Derr said:
THe greatest advantage to the "red dot" is that it tends to even out all the lighting issues within indoor ranges. Many ranges have great light on the target and little or no light on the sights, this draws your eye off the sight and on to the target, not a good thing. I love iron sights, but found in league shooting that the lighting from one club to the next changed so dramaticaly that I never could get the performance I wanted. With the dot you look at the dot and it is much brighter than the target. I also think that for many it eliminates or streamlines some of the sighting process. The dot has kept many shooters with older eyes in the game, and brought some back who had left. Greg
Click to expand...

Thanks for that Greg, I thought it was me. Many ranges seem to be Low light and have prevented me from seeing my sights. To the point I had to put a dot on my revolver, as much as I hated to do it. Now if only I could find a Green Dot[grin] I see that color better.

Regards,
 
I shoot with the Greater Boston pistol league on the MRA-2 team. I do slightly less then 230 on the national gallery match. I use iron sights only. I use a Ruger MKIII 6 7/8 inch barrel with a volquartsen hammer/sear.
I did the following upgrades to the sights:
http://www.chuckhawks.com/sight_improvements.htm

This is not for the faint of heart, the FS is TINY! I take advantage of the fact that I am a youngin, but it definitely hurts when the lighting is bad. However, the sights are extremely precise and I'd wager easier accuracy wise then a red dot, but at 50 ft. it's a moot point.

If lighting and sights are preventing you from shooting and practicing the other funadmentals then definitely go with a red dot.
 
Round Gunner- I believe there are "green" dots. I'll check it out in the shop later, but it may be an ADCO product. Greg
 
Greg is right. I bought an Adco from Four Seasons some years ago that is dual, turn the knob one way and it's a red dot. Turn it the other way and it is a green dot!

Plan to mount it on my "Janet Reno Special" Ruger PC9 carbine when I place my next Brownell's order (gun needs special 30mm rings).
 
Matt: Dot size is all a matter of personal preference. I like a small dot for slowfire and usually make it one or two clicks (brighter) for timed and rapid. In the T/R stages picking up the sight is more critical, if you have to hunt for a small dot that can waste time. In general the dot should be of a size that does not totally cover the black.
 
Matt, I'll second much of what others have said. You should obviously strive to become a competent shooter with iron sights, but for actual bullseye competition, for better or worse red dots have become pretty much mandatory. Sure, it's possible to shoot great scores with iron sights and when I started bullseye some 20 years ago I saw plenty of 290+ scores shot with iron, but it takes a pretty rare talent and a lot of training.

As GTOShootr said, I think most bullseye shooters regard the Ultra Dot brand as the best, even though it's not the most expensive. I have four of their Match Dot models on different pistols and they're magnificent - 4 dot sizes to switch between and guaranteed for life, which is nice to know when you've got one slide-mounted on a .45. I got all mine from Larry's - good prices and great service.

Similar to what Greg mentioned, I often adjust my dot sight differently for the slow fire vs. sustained fire stages, usually going to the next larger size dot for sustained fire. The larger dot prevents me from excessive "aiming" which, for me anyway, leads to chicken finger followed by the inevitable jerked shot low and left.

You'll need to give some thought to mounting it on your Ruger - all dot sights I'm familiar with mount on standard Weaver rails and I'm not familiar with the Ruger but I assume you'll need to have a rail put on. Greg can advise on that.
 
Unfortunately most of the MKIIs didn't come drilled and tapped for the Ruger scope base (I believe all of them). The best thing to do is get a $30 rail from someone like Volquartsen and then have a gunsmith drill the holes for the rail to go in. Then mounting optics should be a matter of tightening some screws (I have never mounted anything before so don't take advice from me). I have seen other methods like scope rings that grip the receiver like a vice, but this seems optimal to me.

https://www.volquartsen.com/vc//pages/public/ListItems.jsp?id=19
Ruger might also have something, but that portion of their website is down.
http://ruger.com/webapp/wcs/stores/...tegory_rn=11953&lastCategory=11953&srCode=ALL
http://ruger.com/Firearms/FASRFACat?facode=32&store=Y

The ultradot weights 5 oz. Weight can be a factor when mounting a red-dot, my current bullseye gun is 45 oz. which is too heavy for my taste and I would want to move to a lighter gun before mounting a red-dot. I have noticed that competitors sometimes spend more on a red-dot to reduce weight or parallax.
 
Last edited:
adweisbe - My 30 mm Ultra Dot Match Dots weigh 4.8 oz. Some of the smaller (1" diameter) and simpler Ultra Dot models are down around 3.9 oz. Obviously where (i.e., front to back) you actually mount it on the gun has a big effect on the "felt" weight.
 
I shoot in the Nashoba Valley League, using an UltraDot on my MKIII.
I shot plenty with irons prior to installing the dot. Go with a dot; you can always go back to irons if you wish.
For the UltraDot, I probably should have gotten a 1", but I have the 30mm.
 

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