What optics do you prefer for a "go-to" rifle ?

Outdoor Life Survival | Prep | Gear
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Not all;

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Well I got rid of my prism scope. Red dots are pretty much where im at. In my shtf loadout i have binoculars to PID, I really want to go lpvo but I cant warm up to them.

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:rofl: ive heard of a few surviving gun shots and house fires. Red dots are also probably more durable than scopes, imo. Ive seen more scopes go belly up and lose the ability to hold zero than quality red dots crap out.

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I finally got a Prism this summer and a second within a few months. The Bushnell Lil’P, I know, the name is some corny shit but the little bastards seem to work. Astigmatism distorts even the best red dots for me so having that nice, crisp little glowing BDC reticle is sweet. I think good things are going to happen for small prism scopes, Primary Arms, Vortex, and now Bushnell have expanded their prism scope lines and started pushing sizes smaller. A win win for us ocularly challenged.

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Have a link by chance? Looking for some different options

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The Primary Arms ACSS 3x is what I had. I might give the PA 1-8x24mm LPVO a chance next. The magnification on the prisms just isnt worth it to me, at x6 or x8 that changes my my tone though.

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Here is an initial impressions review. I have not had it in the cold or sent it coyote hunting with a grandson yet so more impressions to follow as it gets used.

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I used to shoot with a cop that had a 2x prism scope on his duty rifle due to his eyesight . I dont have that issue yet but it makes sense. Especially if you dont like the weight or balance of LPVO.

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159

I have a Vortex 1-8x and my grandson got the PA 1-8x. Image quality is the same, they both degrade when above six power. My two Bushnell Tactical elite 1-6.5x’s are far better quality optics but about twice the price. I will be sticking with a lighter wallet, the extra quality is worth it to me.

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I’m really surprised that ACOG is so low on the list. Makes me think it’s because a lot of people may not have tried them

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Not enough magnification for me to spend that much. Great quality though, Trijicon glass is a nice. If the Elcan concept ever picks up i would be in heaven, I love the design.

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I’m in the red dot column because at my AO shots beyond 100 yards are rare. But I’m just at home with a LVPO. In fact I had LVPOs on 2 of my newest go to rifles and recently removed them to save weight and mass, and put red dots on them***. Both are bullpups BTW. But my competition SBR PCC which is also another go to gun wears a Holosun red dot which has proven itself to be utterly reliable with many thousands of rounds through it and 2 years of competition. If there was a problem with the optic I’d know it by now. In fact I’ve purchased many more of them and have had no problems with any of them.

Much has been said of battery requirements for red dots. It’s a problem only if one is living in a cave or has older red dots*. But buy new and it’s not a problem unless one wants it to be. My Holosun sights have PV cells mounted on top, so unless I don’t have it switched to use ambient light or there is no light it’ll work w/o a battery. With a battery it has something like 20k hour run time. One disadvantage to using ambient light
 if the sight is in bright light and the target isn’t in the same light (dimly lit) the dot can wash it out. It’s happened to me in competition, but it didn’t prove to be the negative I initially thought it would be when I addressed the target and hasn’t been a problem since. If the difference was more extreme it probably would be but the solution is simple. Just switch over to use the battery and manual brightness control. I have other red dots that adjust for the target light perfectly.

I’ve written this before
 1 1/2 years ago we had a cop killer running around in the back 40 and surrounding thousands of heavily wooded acres and that experience was the seed for upgrading my go to rifles making them both lighter in weight and much smaller**. Again, for me in my AO red dots work fine. I did try LVPOs and I love them on hunting rifles, but for carrying around the homestead a red dot works fine and more weight, mass, or magnification isn’t needed. I have vermin exterminators that wear scopes, but the guns with red dots work just as well I’ve found out. Maybe not where you are, but we don’t all have the same circumstances. If I lived where long shots would be required I’d still have my LVPOs on them and not red dots. I’d also be looking for a LVPO with long eye relief, think scout scope type. I’ve come to love the ability to see around the sight that I get by mounting it far from the eye (Col’ Cooper was right yet again IMO!). I’ve had folks try my SBR PCC and they initially are skeptical of the sight mounted that far out, but after shouldering it just a few times they come around and typically state," The dot is right there.", or some such. Yup, and my eye is already on the next target since it’s also in my vision.

In years past (late '70s actually) I was an early user of LVPO scopes for jump shooting deer in heavy cover and I was questioned by folks who just “knew” how slow a scope was and what a handicap I was under. Hunting with one such person 2 deer got up and mine was down before he shouldered his rifle and he never did get a shot. I just asked him if that was, “fast enough to suit you?”. Put cross hairs on target and get the shot off smoothly, what’s so difficult? It’s like a video game. Oh, that rifle was also a .308 carbine bolt gun and not the favored “thuty-thuty” brush gun. My comment? “Why do I need more than one round?”.

***The red dots are on QD mounts as are the scopes, and they can be changed as I wish. That arrangement is standard for me anymore.

*Yes I have older RD sights too a mix of AccuPoint and Trijicon, but even they have 30k+ runtimes, at least the ones I would trust my life to, and the key is to change cells yearly despite the long runtimes and have plenty on hand. They’re lithium so they have a very long shelf life and they aren’t going to break the bank.

**I heft my older full length guns today and they seem about a mile long and I wonder how I ever used them, yet I definitely did. I’ve grown to love bullpups for the higher power cartridges (and their full length barrels that make use of them efficiently) and SBRs where appropriate (PCC or rimfire).

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I wonder how many shooters buy POS red dots from ebay for $20 and find they are exactly what they paid for (POS)? I once had a friend, now deceased, who would buy really nice guns and think it was OK to scrimp on the sight. He brought one rifle over to sight in. He had the already mentioned $20 dot sight on it. It was a bright full sunlight day with deep blue skies. For the life of me, with it turned up to full brilliance I could barely see the dim wisp of a dot. But he could have an unusable dot in many colors! I tried to get him to understand that a great rifle with a POS sight turned the entire rig into a POS, but I think those words fell on deaf ears. I suspect lots of folks who aren’t really shooters do much the same thing (“Here, try this!”) and don’t see the sense in putting a good or great optic on a quality firearm. I have to add, since I shoot handcannons, or mounting optics properly. I’ve seen scopes come recoiling off of handguns and hit the owner in the forehead to drive the point home. Sometimes they see the point when the blood is running down their face.

But back to red dots. I’d wager that the battery life on that $20 red dot sight of my buddies was in the single digit hours if even that long. I wouldn’t know because I quit and just handed it back to him when I couldn’t see the ridiculous and mostly invisible aiming point. FWIW, that was my intro’ to bullpups, but I knew that it wasn’t the guns fault. The gun was actually quite nice.

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What kind of bullpups? (Tavor, ps90, Aug, etc)

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The whole “an EMP will fry your RDS” is also rather presumptuous considering we have no real way of knowing the effects of an EMP and can only guess on the source. I know Aimpoint claims their sights are “EMP proof” yet they dont seem to provide proof anywhere.

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There is actual tests performed to know how an EMP would effect vehicles and it pretty much said it would kill them but they would fire back up with minor malfunctions (most of them) and the ones not running it wouldn’t do nothing to.

So I half way wonder if the EMP thing is over played

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The word EMP is a very generalised word , the effects would not be the same for every EMP. To group all together is like grouping all ammo together to discuss ballistics. I.E. A nuke wouldnt hit the ssme as a solar flare
tons of variables here.

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If EMP will destroy red dots, many militaries of the world will be in the same boat and with much more expensive electronics as well. In fact the Holosuns I use are mil’ rugged and designed for hard use despite their small size, I doubt that they didn’t consider EMP when designing them and the Trijicons and AccuPoints. But if that’s the case a spare scope with QD mounts will work nicely so the EMP argument falls flat. One CAN have more than one sight per gun and more sitting on the shelf. There is no upper limit on the number of sights per gun yet, not even in CA or NJ. :smiley: There is no one best sight and options can be sitting on the shelf all sighted in ready to be QDed in place. Heck, one can even put BUIS on a gun. :smiley:

To answer your question. My buddy had an AUG clone with common sense upgrades that Steyr never implemented over the years. He would talk it down because he knew how picky I am and he wanted to beat me to it, but I liked the gun and at the time if I wanted an AUG type it’s the one I would have chosen. Since then AUG upgraded to what his clone was, to the best of my meager AUG knowledge.

I have a KelTec RDB and a Desert Tech MDR both in .223/5.56, and hopefully soon once DT finishes it, a conversion in .300BLK. It took 28 months for me to receive my MDR, I hope not that long for the conversion since it’s only a barrel with proper porting. But they simply won’t say how far along they are or even if they’re working on it. In order to get the MDR in .300BLK I had to buy it in .223/5.56 and convert it, so right now I really don’t have what I purchased yet. In March I’ll have been waiting 40 months.

You didn’t ask, but the PCCs are a KelTec sub2000 that I used for a few years in competition with a red dot (exc’ gun BTW!). Then came the cop killer and I ultimately set up a B&T GHM9 SBR that turned the sub2k into a safe queen.

Here is the B&T GHM9 in it’s present SBR configuration with a 35 rnd ext’ mag in place. It started out as a handgun, then a braced handgun while it was waiting for the tax stamp. FWIW, it carries like a feather, when slung I don’t even notice it. A red dot is right at home on it and anything other just wouldn’t “be right” IMO. If you have sharp eyes and spy the numerous sling points, I think I’ve decided on a 2 point sling, but totally not decided yet so I leave all of the QD swivels in place while I continue to test slings and connection points. Yes, it has the Holosun on a QD mount and the included BUIS folded away but in place (hopefully never to be used).

If I want it even smaller I have the factory folding wire stock and can change out the rigid stock for the folder in a heartbeat.

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