Shooting accurately is a matter of combining many effective parts into one functional system. Shooter, firearm, ammunition, and sighting system must all work in concert. When we make precision a top priority in equipping a rifle, the natural instinct is to grab a magnified optical Sight. This makes both our target and our Reticle easier to see. While magnification is helpful, it’s important to remember that it’s not an absolute requirement for accurate rifle shooting. Red-dot and reflex optics can produce amazing shots if you take the time to practice with them. These tips gathered from own experiences with electro-optical sights may help, too:

1) Reticle Choice

There’s a vast range of reticle types available in the electro-optical sight market today. Dots, crosshairs, circles, chevrons, hashes, and triangles – or combinations of these shapes – are all quite common. There are benefits and drawbacks to every choice, but you can shoot well with almost any reticle. The advantage to dots and open circles is that they are easy to center. Many shapes (e.g. triangles, chevrons, hash marks) are designed to provide you with fast, rough information about target size and range by comparing the reticle to the target. A crosshair reticle is perfect for target “quartering” as you center your aim.

In my personal experience, while dots are the fastest shapes to acquire, I do my best fine aiming with pointed shapes like triangles. With many electro-optics, you’ll need to account for imperfections in the reticle. Many models, for example, are infamous for delivering a “dot” reticle that is actually more bean or star-shaped. In order to get useful performance out of an odd-shaped reticle, I always zero it to its finest point, even if this is in an abnormal off-center position. The slight irregularity doesn’t hamper close-range shooting, where acquisition speed trumps precision. When I’m shooting at smaller targets or longer ranges, having a fine point allows me to place the reticle against my target more carefully.

2) Setting The Brightness

An electronic sight with adjustable brightness will offer the fastest acquisition when you turn it all the way up according to the experts at Gander Outdoors. This is quite reasonable for close-range shooting where targets need to be dealt with as quickly as possible. When circumstances give you the opportunity to slow down, though, you can get a finer aiming point by turning down the sight’s brightness. I get the best results by setting my brightness just high enough to make the reticle distinguishable from my target.

The ideal brightness will be different for every shooter and every situation. Eyesight, reticle style, and environmental lighting all change how much illumination you need from your sight. The brighter you set your sight, the more likely aiming points are to wash out the picture of your target. This becomes especially problematic with a flawed reticle shaped.

I’m also, sadly, in a position to testify to the fact that changes in eyesight can change your brightness preferences. Many different vision problems, particularly astigmatism, can blur reticle shapes and make it much harder to aim precisely.

3) Reticle Size Selection

It’s challenging to strike the right balance between a fine aiming point and fast sight acquisition when you’re setting up an unmagnified sight. Reticles whose main aiming points are set at 2 minutes of angle (MOA) or less offer great precision but may be hard to acquire quickly. The good news is that the same bloom effect discussed above can be turned into an advantage. Higher brightness settings can make your reticle appear larger.

Fine aiming doesn’t become impossible when you use a larger reticle; you just need to vary your aiming techniques to suit the reticle. Trijicon’s triangle and chevron reticles are my favorite examples. Their 12-MOA triangle covers more than 12 inches at 100 yards. That seems suitable only for barn door shooting, but I find that the tip of the triangle or chevron serves as an incredibly precise hold point.

Even large-dot reticles can be set up and used for precision shooting. My trick is to zero the top edge of a big reticle dot (the 12-o’clock position) at the distance I intend to shoot at. This gives me an unobstructed view of my target over the top of the dot. When accuracy becomes less important, I get good results by simply holding this edge below the point-of-impact I’m aiming for. And at short distances, the dot can simply be placed on top of my target.

4) Using Unpowered Sights

There are some non-magnified optics choices that don’t require batteries. These sorts of sights have potential drawbacks, though. Fiber-optic reticles can wash out your target picture if the environmental conditions are extremely bright – like shooting in the midday sun. This can be solved by sticking a bit of tape over the illuminator’s fiber to reduce the amount of light drawn in.

The tendency of unpowered optical sights to disappear in low-light conditions is tougher to prevent. Reticles with a physical backup reticle (like a traditional scope) are a solution, but one you have to seek out prior to purchasing your sight.

The very worst situation for unpowered sights is probably night shooting with a weapon light. There isn’t enough ambient light to power fiber optics and tritium elements won’t show up against a target bathed in white light. Mounting your light as close to your optic as possible can help a little. Ultimately, though, you need to consider different sights if you know in advance that you’ll be dealing with challenging lighting.

5) Adding Magnifiers

When we need better target detail, mounting a magnifier behind an electro-optical sight can get the job done. Obviously, this involves magnifying our reticles, too. This can be a problem (again!) if you have a flawed reticle. A starry Aimpoint will turn into a bomb cloud when you put a magnifier on top of it. This is another situation where I recommend picking out a specific point in your reticle and zero it for more precise aiming.

Modern rifle shooters are almost spoiled for choice by today’s incredibly diverse sight market. I think the last word in maximum precision will always be the variable-power magnifying scope, but electro-optical sights are simpler, smaller, lighter, and (usually) cheaper. If you do most of your shooting at relatively short ranges, you can easily cultivate accurate results by learning to use a non-magnified sight well.

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