The gobbler would obviously continue to strut down the cattle trail into range of my 20 gauge. Smug in my knowledge of turkey behavior and a little breathless at the prospect of bagging this magnum gobbler, I set up on the downhill side of the hickory tree so I’d have a cross-body shot at the incoming bird.
Naturally, the gobbler didn’t follow the script, and instead dropped off the trail and approached from the opposite direction. As a lefty, I was screwed, my body on the wrong side of the tree to make the shot. Compounding my exasperation, I was so exposed that I worried the tom would see me as he crossed to my right, where I could make the left-handed shot.
So I improvised. As the tom crossed behind a tree, I slowly moved my shotgun to my right shoulder and dumped him at 28 yards as he strutted into view. My 20 gauge wasn’t fully settled in my shoulder, but I had a fine view of his head thanks to a Vortex red-dot sight on that Mossberg.
That off-shoulder shot wouldn’t have been nearly as possible with a traditional single bead on my shotgun, or even its successor on turkey guns, a rear sight that aligns with the open front sight. There’s simply too much going on visually in that situation, having to align three focal planes (turkey, front sight, and rear sight) to make a snap shot in an awkward position.
Similarly, a low-power traditional scope would have been tricky, as I probably couldn’t have gotten a good view through the narrow eyebox of the optic.
In this situation, the red-dot sight—in this instance I was behind Vortex’s Sparc solar red dot—was the perfect tool for the moment. But as I’ve slowly transitioned to red-dots on all my turkey guns, I’ve come to appreciate their wider application, to the extent that I won’t go back to other sights in the turkey woods, and have started using red-dots on other platforms, including my rimfire plinkers, home-defense shotgun, an AR carbine, and straight-wall cartridge rifles.
The detail that has made red-dots my go-to sight for turkey hunting is that they’re finally sized for the job.
Early red-dots were big and bulky and because they mounted on Weaver hardware, they sat high above the receiver, the Sparc among them. I used a TruGlo sight for a couple years on a Remington 870, but the combination of the low comb of the shotgun and the high profile of the sight meant I never got a good cheek weld.
Happily, the micro series of red dots with enclosed housing, low-profile mounting options, and much better optics than those early versions have finally matched the sight with the platform and the purpose.
Key Benefits of Red-Dot Sights for Turkey Hunting
First, the red dot of the sight enables precise aiming. Many of these have 3 MOA dots, the very size I’d recommend for turkeys. As you know from rifle scopes, 1 MOA is roughly equivalent to 1 inch at 100 yards, so a 3 MOA dot covers 3 inches at 100 yards, and doing the math would cover about 1.2 inches at 40 yards, a fairly common distance for a modern turkey shotgun.
Not coincidentally, that’s roughly the size of a gobbler’s head at 40 yards. If your payload is tuned to your aiming point, then you are able to deliver a devastating load of TSS pellets to that relatively small target at considerable distances.
I killed turkeys out to 40 yards with the ivory bead of my OG turkey gun, a 3-1/2-inch ported Mossberg 835, but now I understand why I gravitated to magnum shotshells, those 2-ounce doses of copper-plated #5s. I needed all that payload to take distant gobblers because I had only a vague idea of my aiming point.
The combination of tungsten-matrix shot that enables smaller shot size but more pellets, tight choke constrictions, and the hyper-precise aiming point of a red-dot sight has revolutionized turkey hunting, making it more related to rifle hunting than the close-enough shot strings of wingshooting.
Second, the sights are parallax-free. That’s a ten-dollar term, as my father would say, but in the uncertain world of turkey hunting, its practical application is significant. It basically means that as long as that dot is on your target, you can move your head around as much or as little as you want and your payload will still hit home.
That’s an important consideration for the scenario I detailed at the start of this story. The reality of turkey hunting is that our shots are often rushed and off-balance, and red-dots are forgiving of proper cheek weld, eye relief, and alignment. As long as that red dot is on your target, you have a good chance of making meat.
Third, modern micro sights mount low on firearms’ receivers. Vortex is leading the way with its multi-mounting options on its Viper line, but even models with gun-specific mounting patterns have solved that problem of high-profile mounting by staying low. That close-to-bore mounting not only makes tuning the dot to the center of the pattern easier but it ensures that shooters will have a solid cheek weld on their stock without having to add elevation to the comb or cheat their heads off the stock in order to align their eye with the dot.
Fourth, the wide field of view of unmagnified red-dots gives shooters broad situational awareness. Couple that with a shooters’ both-eyes-open aiming and you can easily pick up peripheral motion of an incoming gobbler without turning your head, and position the gun and sight to take the shot when the opportunity presents itself. Compare that to the relatively narrow field of view of a traditional magnified scope.
And lastly, red dots are stupid-simple. I coached my kids to become crack shots with a red-dot sight on a semi-automatic .22. “Put the dot on your target and pull the trigger,” I told them. They did, they scored, and they were hooked on shooting because of the easy on-ramp to the activity with the simple sight. It’s the same with turkey hunting. “Put the dot just below that gobbler’s head and pull the trigger.”
You don’t have to mess with the bird ducking below the barrel, as often happened with that old bead-sighted Mossberg. You don’t have to line up a front and rear sight with a turkey’s head, as I had to do with my notch-and-leaf open sights of my next turkey gun. And you don’t have to worry about adjusting the magnification or turning on the illumination with a turkey approaching, as I did with the 1-4×24 scope I mounted on my next gobbler-getter.
Red-Dot Sights for Other Platforms
While I maintain that micro red-dots are perfectly suited for turkey shotguns, don’t limit them to thunder chickens.
A number of my .22 rifles have red-dots, not only because they’re perfect mid-range sights, but because I use those rimfires to introduce kids and new shooters to guns and target shooting. As I mentioned with my own kids, red-dots are easy to use, easy to explain, and easy to deploy in a number of plinking scenarios, from rolling tin cans to fast-fire target action to engaging dynamic targets.
I now start new shooters on red dots and once they get the confidence of hitting targets and operating guns, I’ll graduate them to open sights and then magnified optics. But red-dot sights are an important introductory sight for beginning shooters because they’re simple, intuitive, and forgiving of imperfect form.
They’re also infinitely versatile. I use Vortex’s new Viper enclosed red-dot sight on my coyote shotgun. I have a red-dot on my 350 Legend that I deploy—and also loan to my neighbors—for use in mid-range hunting for late-season whitetails.
Low-profile red dots are perfectly suited to handguns, ARs, and lever guns.
They’re also becoming more common on wingshooting shotguns. Check out the Vortex Viper version with selectable reticles. The unit offers seven reticle choices ranging from the simple 3 MOA red dot to a 65 MOA circle for shotshell patterning, 32 and 65 MOA circles for bracketing targets, combined circles with the red dot, and the 3 MOA dot inside the 32 MOA circle. The reticles allow shooters to tune their loads and chokes to the sight, and then use the sight to frame moving targets at various distances.
Even in turkey-hunting situations, red dots enable killing shots at both stationary and moving birds. Taking a page from upland hunters and clay-target shooters, if that gobbler spooks and starts running, the red-dot enables hunters to visualize the correct lead to drop the fleeing tom. Try that with a magnified shotgun scope.
Downsides to Red-Dot Sights
As with any illuminated optic, the red-dot sight is only as good as its battery. If the power goes out, so does your aiming point, so be sure to have back-up batteries. But the reality is that most of these units will run for up to 5 years on a single battery, so as long as you refresh the charge before the season, it should run for longer than you do.
Another downside is that these unmagnified sights won’t zoom in on your target. True, but the trade-off is the wide field of view of the 1X sights.
Some hunters don’t like the protrusion of the sight above the receiver. But I maintain that the low-profile red-dot sights don’t add much, and the solid mounting hardware ensures that the sight won’t be knocked off plumb even in vigorous field campaigns. Besides, the micro red dots are much smaller in profile than conventional red-dot sights or traditional magnified optics.
Last Word on Red-Dot Sights for Turkey Hunting
Given all the advantages—from precise aiming point to parallax-free sighting to wide field of view—there are more reasons to use a red-dot sight on a turkey gun than there are reasons to stick with conventional sights.
As more brands enter the market for micro sights, prices will continue to drop and selection will increase. Whatever brand you settle on, make sure the sight fits your gun, and then invest in the most versatile, useful, and durable sight on the market.