Hunter Safety We are finishing up the hunter safety class in Northwood, and are about to start the Manly session.

As usual, we had some pretty good shots, and again, as usual, they were girls.  Our best shot of the class (shooting pellet guns) was actually a tie between a girl and a boy.

I had introduced a new type of sight this year, the reflex or red dot sight.  It really is neat to use.  You have a small piece of upright glass mounted on top of the gun.  A laser shines a dot (or in some cases other shapes) onto the glass and it doesn’t matter where you put your head, even off to the side a considerable distance, the dot will stay centered on the target.  So, essentially you don’t even have to look straight down the barrel to see where you are going to shoot.

This worked really well with students who had never shot a gun before, and sights were a bit of a mystery. 

How did the red dot stack up against the competition?  I had four guns with four different sights.  Standard open sights, a peep sight, a scope and the reflex (red dot) sight.  When I shot them side by side, I could get essentially identical performance.  I shot 49’s (out of 50) with the peep and open sight guns, and 48’s with the scope and red dot.  In this case the target was close enough that the scope actually wasn’t able to focus perfectly on the target which hindered slightly its performance.  The red dot was actually a bit larger in appearance than a guy would have liked, but it did match perfectly the size of the black center of the target.

On long range, the scope would of course have the edge with its ability to magnify the image, but for quick moving relatively short distances, you may wish to consider mounting a red dot on a gun in the future.  It might be ideal for shotgun deer hunting.