Adding a high-performance reflex sight to your weapon can speed up target acquisition and improve precision, but only if you know how to use a red dot sight. For most shooters, red dot shooting is highly intuitive, but for others, especially those who are used to traditional scopes or who happen to have a cross-dominant aiming eye, it can be more challenging. The good news is that with a little practice, almost any shooter can improve their proficiency and accuracy with a reflex sight. Let’s take a look at how these advanced optics work and how to get the most from them at the range and in the field.
Whether you’re using a reflex, holographic, or prism sight, the red dot is created essentially the same way. A bright light source, either an LED or laser, emits a beam that is reflected back to the shooter’s eye, overlaying the target with a dot, chevron, or reticle, depending on how the beam is collimated, filtered, or split. This effectively reduces the focal planes involved in aiming your gun from the three planes of iron sights–rear sight, front sight, and target–to two planes–dot and target.
As you learn how to use a red dot sight properly, these planes tend to merge, with the target in focus and the dot intuitively overlaid, effectively creating a single-plane aiming system. The eye and brain have a much easier time lining up your shots, making it far easier to find and acquire your sight picture quickly and get back on target for follow-up shots. It also improves accuracy since you no longer have to hold two planes out of focus while carefully placing the third, as with iron sights.
A red dot does not change the physics of firing a ballistic projectile at a target. It’s important to understand that your bullets will still follow an arcing trajectory when they leave the gun. While learning how to use a red dot sight makes finding your aiming point easier, red dot shooting still requires you to manually adjust for range. It’s still necessary to understand at what ranges your bullet passes through the aim point directly and when you need to adjust your aim point up or down to account for the target’s distance.
Reflex red dot sights, whether open or closed emitter, have unlimited eye relief. This means that you can leave both eyes open while aiming. This results in a process that is almost as easy as looking at your target past the gun and lining up the red dot where you want to hit.
Cowitnessing is when you install your reflex sight in a position where your iron sights can still be seen through your optic’s lens. Some optics can be set up for absolute co-witness, with the red dot lining up with the iron sights exactly, while others allow for lower third cowitnessing, which positions the iron sights for use below the center point of your red dot lens. Cowitnessing has a few advantages.
Red dot shooting with a cowitness mount set-up is just as simple as using either your red dot or iron sights separately. For aiming with the red dot, line up your shot as above using the illuminated aiming point. To use the iron sights, adjust your weapon to allow you to line up the back sight, front sight, and target.
Now you know how to use a red dot sight, but using it effectively takes work. Here are a few tips to shorten the learning curve:
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