Shotgun dot sight on a rifle?

[Mike38]

Here's my dumb question of the year. Well, there will be more but here's my first one. I bought a Tru-Glo red dot sight that is made for use as a turkey shotgun sight. I mounted it on a Saiga 223 rifle. My thoughts are if the sight can hold up to the recoil of a 3 inch magnum 12 gauge, it should last forever on a .223 rifle. Or am I going to soon realize that I wasted my money and the sight will fall apart in the near future?

The only negative part so far is this sight has a one MOA click adjustment on it rather than the 1/4 inch per click that I'm used to. But then again, it's an AK so precision paper punching is not going to be part of the game.

 

[Scorch]

The 1 MOA adjustments are not the only drawback. Your dot also subtends about 6 MOA, which for a shotgun out to 50-ish yds is just fine, but for a centerfire rifle it's terrible.

 

[Nathan]

Saiga 223 rifle

Seems appropriate for this kind of rifle.

 

[44 AMP]

The sight holding up under recoil should not be an issue.

Bolt it on, sight it in the best you can with its large adjustments, and see if it improves or detracts from your shooting. If it doesn't work well enough, all you're out is the time it took to mount it, and the cost of the ammo used during testing.

 

[Recycled bullet]

What is sub tending? Scorch mentions it at the end of post 2 " sub tends 6moa".

 

[tangolima]

That's the size of the dot. It covers 6moa. It is equivalent to 6" plate at 100yd. It works for torso size target. Helps with quick target acquisition too.

Most red dot sights have 1/2moa per click. 1moa is a bit coarse but quite adequate for torso size target. Doesn't the famous m1 garand have 1moa per click?

-TL

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[Mike38]

Thanks for the replies. If memory serves me, this dot sight has a 5 moa dot, so not that much different than described above. Primary use will be punching holes in full sized torso targets at 100 and 200 yards, so this dot sight should work out just fine. Thanks again.

 

[Nathan]

What is sub tending?

This gets a little “mathy”, sorry.

Subtension: LINK

There is a point in your eye somewhere that things you see come to a point. From there your vision can be thought of as a cone. If you cut that cone in half, it makes 2 right triangles which are easier to understand….with the long side being your line of sight through the center of your eye, the dot and the aim point on the target.

If a dot is big enough to be labeled as 6 moa, it will be seen as 1.5” at 25 yards, 3” at 50 yds, 6” at 100 yds, 12” at 200 yds, 18” at 300 yds and so on…. That is because those numbers all relate to the common angle subtended by the dot size. Maybe you remember some geometry or trig that taught use how triangle that share the same angle will follow this pattern.

 

[Recycled bullet]

This gets a little “mathy”, sorry.



Subtension: LINK



There is a point in your eye somewhere that things you see come to a point. From there your vision can be thought of as a cone. If you cut that cone in half, it makes 2 right triangles which are easier to understand….with the long side being your line of sight through the center of your eye, the dot and the aim point on the target.



If a dot is big enough to be labeled as 6 moa, it will be seen as 1.5” at 25 yards, 3” at 50 yds, 6” at 100 yds, 12” at 200 yds, 18” at 300 yds and so on…. That is because those numbers all relate to the common angle subtended by the dot size. Maybe you remember some geometry or trig that taught use how triangle that share the same angle will follow this pattern.

So ..it's like how sight of the sun or the moon may be completely obstructed by a bottle cap held at arms length?

 

[bamaranger]

time

It will be interesting to see how the Tru-glo holds up over time. The slam bang action of the AK action may be tough on the optic. My Mini 30 and a vintage Ruger .44 semi carbine were very tough on budget scopes and required a Leupold to hold up over time.