Pros and Cons of Putting a Red-Dot on Your Turkey Gun

Two decades ago, a European optics manufacturer invited me on a turkey hunt to promote a new turkey hunting shotgun scope. The fact that a European company was purposefully building a riflescope for turkey hunting shows just how popular optics for turkey guns were, even 20 years ago. Today, however, you’d probably have better luck finding a three-bearded gobbler with painted toenails than a new, traditionally styled scope purpose-built for a turkey shotgun. These days, it’s all about the dot.

By dot, I specifically mean compact reflex sights with red-dot reticles. These miniature marvels have taken turkey hunting by storm. In fact, they’ve become so popular on turkey guns that a few years ago Mossberg released the 940 Pro Turkey shotgun, which has a receiver milled to accept direct reflex-sight mounting. Mossberg’s 940 Pro reflects the popularity of red-dots for turkey hunting, but do these sights live up to the hype, as some gun writers and manufacturers want you to believe? To find out, I decided to ask the best turkey hunter I know.

THE TURKEY TSAR

William McGuire is a former game warden who works as a police officer in southern West Virginia. His go-to turkey gun is a Beretta A400 Xtreme Plus. It’s stuffed with handloaded 3 1/2-inch TSS shells and topped with a Trijicon RMR Type 2 that’s held in place with a SumToy Customs mount. McGuire says if the turkeys in West Virginia knew what this combination was capable of, they’d all move to Kentucky. He won’t turkey hunt without a red-dot sight.

Last year, McGuire and his hunters sent more than 20 Eastern mountain gobblers, which might be the hardest of all turkeys to hunt, to the great roost in the sky. He knows where to find turkeys, how to hunt them and, most importantly, how to kill them. So, I asked for his opinion on red-dots for turkey hunting. If you’re contemplating a reflex sight on your gun, pay attention to the benefits and drawbacks that McGuire spells out.

ADVANTAGES

McGuire believes one of the most helpful aspects of a red-dot is how easy it is—compared to open sights—to adjust the dot to coincide with the center of your shotgun’s pattern. “When compared to a shotgun with open sights,” he says, “the red-dot is a tremendous advantage because you can precisely tune your zero.” He suggests another benefit is that a reflex sight is parallax free. Your eye doesn’t have to be centered behind the sight, and the dot doesn’t have to be in the center of your sight window to still be accurate. This is very helpful when having to shoot fast or when you might have to shoot from the other shoulder, something McGuire has often had to do.

Obviously, red-dot sights are also fantastic in low light. No, you don’t turkey hunt in the dark, but if you call in a longbeard in the early morning fog, deep in the dark timber, you’ll have no issues aiming with a red-dot. And finally, McGuire adds that the red-dot sight excels when shooting at distance. With open sights, it’s very difficult to hold high at longer ranges because the front bead—especially a fiber-optic bead—is so big. With the red-dot, you can easily hold with precision at any distance and still see the entire turkey.

DISADVANTAGES

As with any battery-dependent device, a red-dot sight can fail. Red-dots—particularly the good ones—are also expensive, and you need to take care of them. You can toss a turkey shotgun with open sights around in the truck and in the field without worrying about sight damage or knocking the sight off its zero. “With a red-dot,” McGuire says, “you need to be cognizant that it can be broken, and that dirt, water and debris can find their way to the lens and on the emitter, blocking the projection of the red dot onto the lens.”

He adds that installing a red-dot on a shotgun also somewhat limits its utility. Yeah, you can squirrel hunt, duck hunt or upland hunt with a red dot, but if you prefer traditional sights for those pursuits, you must remove your red-dot first. This, of course, requires remounting and maybe re-zeroing every turkey season.

TIPS

McGuire also offers several tips on using and selecting a reflex sight for a turkey shotgun, and he began with advice on sighting in. “Treat your red-dot-equipped turkey shotgun like a rifle,” he says. “Zero it from the bench, take your time, and be extremely precise when adjusting the dot to the center of the pattern.” He likes to zero at 40 yards because with most 12-gauge turkey loads that allows for a dead-on hold out to that distance.

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McGuire also prefers mounting his reflex red-dot sights as low as possible to the receiver to maintain a good cheek weld when shooting. He suggests this helps with sight acquisition and precision aim, and it’s one of the reasons why he chose the SumToy Customs mount for his Beretta. But it’s also a good callout to Mossberg’s 940 Pro Turkey, which offers the lowest reflex-sight mounting possible on any shotgun.

McGuire likes sights with smaller dots of about 3 MOA because he feels they cover less of the turkey and allow for more precise aim. He says those red-dots with an auto-dimming feature are especially nice, too, as they circumvent the need to constantly adjust your sight to changing light conditions. If going the red-dot route, McGuire suggests buying the best quality model you can afford, and with the good ones, prices start around $350.

To keep your dot from failing due to a dead battery, McGuire recommends turning it on when you load your turkey gun and off when you unload. However, with the excellent battery life on many of today’s reflex sights, if you replace the battery at the start of every season, he says you can “turn it on when season starts and leave it on until season is over.”

JUST RIGHT FOR RED-DOTS

I’m not convinced that non-magnifying reflex red-dot sights are ideal for some of the applications for which they’re often promoted. In my opinion, they don’t have the resolution or magnification needed for big-game hunting, they do not deal with directed light or debris well enough for use on a carry gun, and as a primary sight on a general-purpose rifle, they’re extremely limiting. However, if there’s an application where the reflex sight excels, it’s on a turkey shotgun. You don’t need one to kill a gobbler, but if you want to maximize your turkey-killing potential, it is the way to go. At least, that’s what the best turkey hunter I know believes, and there are few turkey hunters out there with enough experience to argue with him.