Friday, July 25, 2008
Why I Sell Red-Dot Sights
Hunters often stop by, ask me to adjust their bow, and state they are having trouble hitting a buck during the last 15 minutes before shooting time ends. Almost always they are hunting in heavy cover with very little available light.
What’s my problem, they ask. I look over the bow, and spot a peep sight, and point to it.
They insist they’ve always hunted with a peep sight, and that isn’t the problem. I can reduce or cut the light to my archery range, and it proves effective when determining what people can or can’t see through their peep sight.
If it is a dark and overcast day outside, and I turn off the inside lights, the archery shop gets pretty dark. I ask them to shoot with the lights on, and then again with the lights off.
They nail the bulls-eye when the lights are on, and it’s like hunting on a sunny day on my shooting range. Once the lights go off, and they try to shoot, some arrows won’t even hit the target.
I make and sell red-dot sights, and I don’t like to speak ill of the products of other people’s products, because what goes around, comes around. The archery industry is a great place to make friends and enemies, and I’d much rather make friends.
I have them shoot under low-light conditions, and often their shots are a long way from the bulls-eye. I look over their peep site, and with a small adjustment I can help them out. In other cases, I can’t help them at all.
Some peep sights have a very tiny hole and it admist very little light. As the sun goes down, and when hunting in thick, heavy cover, the tiny hole in the peep sight doesn’t allow enough light to enter. The result is it is difficult to see where to aim.
Some hunters compound the problem by closing their off-eye. The master eye looks through the peep but the other eye is closed. It gives them one-eye vision, and it isn’t very good in dim light.
One thing people can do is remove the insert from the peep sight, and that leaves a larger hole to look through. It’s easier for the hunter to gain eye contact with the pin and the animal.
However, some peep sights do not allow this removal. There are peep sights on the market with larger holes, and these will help the sportsman. So too will the use of a red-dot sight.
Another problem with some peep sights is they are incorrectly installed, and this means the peep doesn’t line up properly with the eye when the bow comes back to full draw. There is a good bit of tinkering involved with trying to get the peep sight correctly lined up with the eye when at full draw. If it is off just a tiny bit, what that eye sees is but a fraction of what it should see.
Another problem with using a peep sight is that the sight pins often are much too large. Constricting what the eye sees through a small hole, and trying to place a fat sight pin in the middle of the peep sight hole while placing this combination on the heart and lung area of a deer accounts for many missed shots.
If I were to use a sight pin and a peep sight I would buy the finest, thinnest fiber optic pin made, use a larger than normal hole in the peep sight, and hope for the best.
Many hunters use and believe in peep sights, and I wish them good success. I’ve tried peep sights before, and it just doesn’t work for me. I’d rather go back to instinctive shooting.
For them that like peep sights, shoot them and good luck. I have noticed that once a person gains some age, and must wear glasses, that many hunters find it more difficult using this type of aiming device.
That’s why I manufacture red-dot sights. The peep sight manufacturers can claim the younger market where hunters have great vision and can see well through a peep sight.
I’ll continue to market my red-dot sight to the older hunters, and those with visual problems, and everyone gets what they want: an aiming device that allows them to make clean killing shots, time after time, under all types of legal shooting-light condition while maintaining their share of the market.
This line of thinking is why there are dozens of bow makers, many car and truck makers, and everything else. People in this country do have a choice, and that is what makes America so great. We can decide what we wish to hunt with, and that suits everyone just fine.—The Whitetail Wizard