Btw Ted, good looking pup.
Hi, I'm a relative newbie, especially to scopes and sights. I've been thinking about buying a Red Dot for my Gladius PCP, currently using a Hawke 4-12x50 scope. If I told you I'm mostly shooting at red squirrels (squirrels in the attic started the whole thing) from a distance of 30 to 40 yards (sometimes a little more) does a Red Dot make sense or is the target really too small to use a Red Dot? I'm looking at he Hawke 1x Reflex 5 MO that normally sells for around $150. Also looked at a Vortex that seemed to look pretty nice for about $50 more. I'd probably mount the scope with UTG quick release rings so I could swap back and forth with the sight slightly more easily if I wanted to. thanks for any advice.
Quote from: A1A on April 06, 2016, 08:03:41 AMHi, I'm a relative newbie, especially to scopes and sights. I've been thinking about buying a Red Dot for my Gladius PCP, currently using a Hawke 4-12x50 scope. If I told you I'm mostly shooting at red squirrels (squirrels in the attic started the whole thing) from a distance of 30 to 40 yards (sometimes a little more) does a Red Dot make sense or is the target really too small to use a Red Dot? I'm looking at he Hawke 1x Reflex 5 MO that normally sells for around $150. Also looked at a Vortex that seemed to look pretty nice for about $50 more. I'd probably mount the scope with UTG quick release rings so I could swap back and forth with the sight slightly more easily if I wanted to. thanks for any advice. What range?Mostly 30 to 40 yards for the squirrels. I seem to miss them at 50 yards with the scope which is why I'd like tto try a red dot, quicker target acquisition from what I understand. Thought I read somewhere though that something as small as a red squirrel from 40 yards isn't a red dot sights strong suit.
At that distance, that size of target and a 5 MOA dot size, I would definitely opt for a scope. 5 MOA is a large dot, these days, and will cover up the squirrel's body, completely at 30 to 40 yards. Red squirrels are little guys, barely larger than a Chipmunk. Have them in our yard, too. That very tiny lung/head area will disappear, entirely, behind a red dot, even one with a smaller dot size. Be very tough to insure a clean, humane kill. Get the scope for that work. That's a mighty small target at 40 yards for a red dot. Scope country all the way.
I like red dots and have been using them for years. More recently, I've been using red dots on our airguns. Lots of advantages to using a red dot. Compared to a riflescope, no magnification, so none of the steadiness issues you get with a scope. Very light weight, so won't change the balance or feel of your gun. Smaller and more compact than even the smallest riflescope. No hassles with eye relief as with a scope - place it wherever you want on your gun. Compared to iron sights, easier to use under dark conditions or backgrounds that make iron sights hard to see. No front or rear sight to line up. No need for a six o'clock hold (though you can still use one). No POI changes with changes in angle of light as with iron sights. Easy, convenient adjustments compared to most iron sights. Notice, though, that I didn't say parallax free. Red dots are designed to be parallax free only at a certain minimum distance, typically 50 yards. If you use a red dot for closer work, especially for 10 meter target work, parallax is very definitely an issue and it varies quite a bit from one model of red dot to the next. Not sure where this parallax free baloney started, but I still see it advertised and repeated to this day. Bottom line, you can't ignore parallax on a red dot any more than you can with a riflescope at typical air gun distances of 10 to 30 yards. There are ways to deal with it for your airgun shooting (I'll deal with that in a separate post), but it is there and it can affect accuracy. So what is parallax? To keep it simple, if the red dot moves off target, right to left, when you move your eye behind the red dot, right to left (or up and down when you move your eye up and down), you have parallax. The closer in you get from that typical 50 yard parallax free setting, the more parallax or shifting of that red dot off target you can get when moving your eye behind the red dot. At 10 meters, unless you take great care to place your eye in precisely the same position behind that red dot for each and every shot, even an otherwise perfect shot can miss the X or 10 ring. As mentioned, it can vary quite a bit up close at 10 meters from one model of red dot to the next. Here are the models I tested. Top to bottom, we have an Ultradot 25, an Ultradot 30, A Sigthmark (or Barska, Mueller and so on - basically the same, have them all), Bushnell TRS 25, BSA 30 (or Barska and so on), Tasco Propoint, TruGlo Red/Green. To measure parallax with these red dots, I used a standard Gamo target to score the red dot after firmly resting the red dot on a bag, centered on the 10 ring (half inch in diameter). Moving my eye, right to left, I then checked to see how far off the 10 ring (half inch in size) I could get the dot to move. I actually placed the red dots in the pic from best (minimal) at the top, to worst (really bad) at the bottom. The top two, the Ultradots, I could just barely move off the 10 ring, getting the red dot to move less than a half inch over into the 9 ring. That's as good as I have found in a red dot in terms of parallax. I suspect no coincidence, here, given that Ultradots are premium red dots, well worth the money and not just in terms of the parallax issue. With the Sightmark (Mueller or Barska - have those versions, too), I could pull the red dot out about three quarters of an inch into the 8 ring. Not bad. With the Bushnell TRS 25, I could pull the red dot out nearly an inch into the 7 ring. With the BSA and the Propoint, I could pull out almost an inch and a half into the 5 ring. We're now outside the black bullseye. That's some hefty 10 meter parallax. The Truglo was, well, truly awful. I could actually pull the red dot out over two inches into the 2 ring. Ouch. Does all this parallax stuff mean you shouldn't use a red dot at 10 meters? Absolutely not. If you've been using a red dot, though, at 10 meters (or even less) and have been puzzled by inconsistent accuracy, you might now understand why. The good news is that there are ways to minimize and even eliminate the parallax issue of red dots at 10 meters. I'll get to that in another post.