Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting Red Dot sights on turkey guns- who uses them?

I killed my turkey this season with my tried and true Mossberg 935, with its fiber optic sights. With my aging eyes, I lined up the green front sight and the two blurry red things on the rear sight, and fired.

The blurry situation is not going to work much longer. I am thinking of taking the J Point red dot sight off one of my handguns and mounting it on the Mossberg.

So- who uses red dot sights, reflex or scope, and what brand? There are probably cheaper options than my J Point, I think, but do they work well?

Wouldn't have a dedicated turkey gun without one

I've had several of the truglo gobbledots. All have held zero and been very reliable

First year for me.
I had been using a Remington 11/87 rs tg with rifle sights and thought it was the bees knees.
Sold that and just bought a sbe3 (mostly for waterfowl hunting) and mounted a Vortex venom on it.
Sighted it in the other day and using a jebs .655" choke and Winchester 3 1/2" longbeards #5 it put 327 pellets in a 12" circle at 35 yds

Aimpoint 9000SC. Has been beat up quite a bit.

On my 870 compact camo 20 gauge:





And on the SP-10:

Truglo gobblestpper on a 12 gauge 870 superman and my my 20 gauge 1187 works great.

I've had several try good red dots, and have been around even more.

For the price point they are a great value and the ones I've had have been rugged enough to hold up to the recoil of more 3.5 inch turkey loads than I care to shoot

I have terrible vision and have been using a scope for turkey hunting for 15 years now. This year I mounted a Burris ff3 on a new to me benelli sbe 2 turkey set up. It is the bomb in my opinion. I have killed three with it already this year and cannot see myself ever changing it. Of course I will continue to use a scope on some of my shotguns also, but forget fiber optics if you don't have good vision.

Also it amazes me how many shotguns have point of aim vs point of impact discrepancies. These truly matter with modern turkey chokes and loads. The red dot or scope fixes this issue

Tom264 I would advise you give William at sumtoy a call and use his Burris mount on your new benelli . It gets it lower to the receiver and only mounts on the back two screws. You can wing shoot with it that way if you want and it looks a lot cleaner in my opinion.

I had a Bushnell Trophy red dot mounted on a Browning BPS but didn't like the mass on top of the shotgun - although it always worked reliably. I sold the rig to a hunting buddy and he loves the set up. I do currently have a Williams Firesight set with red front bead and rear green beads rib mounted on a M1300 pump - works fine. However, I simply use the standard bead on a shotgun barrel much of the time now - it's just faster.

I have Fast Fires on all my turkey guns, and have put FFs on all the ones I've built for family and friends. Thumbs up here.

I have 4 Burris Fast Fires. They work exceptionally well. My eyes are not good enough for open sights and I hate using the bead with tight loads. The dot just doesn't get any easier and it's very fast.

Mounted a FF2 on Dad's new turkey gun this year. It was his first time using a reflex on a shotgun, he's pretty die hard about running a bead. We went to TX, which was the maiden voyage for this rig for him and after the first couple shots he was saying "man, I don't know if I like this dot thing.." then by the 3rd bird he was saying "Man, this dot thing is the real deal..." I hope the zero doesn't shift or the battery die lol

All my turkey rigs get the red dot treatment before I carry them out hunting.

FFIII is the one for me. Compact, lighter than light.

I currently use the front bead on both of my turkey guns. But, like you. My eyes are getting worse. I'd really like to get a Burris FF and put it on a Rem 870 youth, but they don't make a mount for a 20ga.

When they do...I will.

Drill and tap for a rail, use the picitinny mount, and BAM problem solved. You can also us the B-square mount if you don't want to drill and tap. I've done over 10 870 youth 20s this way.

Another great option is to buy Sumtoy's new mount for the FF. It only requires two holes and is lower profile. It's a rock solid mount.

Linky???

Like an earlier poster, I don't care for the weight or balance change when a red dot is mounted. I get by with the plain old bead even with my worsening eyes. I figure if I can see well enough to hit a moving clay target with a shotgun, I can do the same with a turkey's head at any reasonable range.

The key to both is a shotgun that shoots where you are looking. I have no problem shimming, using a rasp, adding Bondo, lengthening/shortening a stock or what have you to get the gun to perform as desired. There are times when shooting from an odd position that the red dot will have an advantage but those times have been less common than shooting a moving bird which is something I do thousands of times a year if one counts clay shooting.

Just my take and what works best for me. I practice shooting moving targets with a scoped rifle but prefer a plain bead shotgun if I have a choice. It is what is most familiar to me after doing so for decades.

He doesn't have it on his site, but there are pics on several post on various forums. Try this link and scroll down for pics:
http://oldgobbler.com/Forum/index.php?topic=70792.0

Burris Fastfire III with a speedbead mount. THE best turkey optic out there