Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Night sights or not?

Since Waders asked for everyone to post a new thread, here goes.

I have used several different sights over the years and I've found that no two people see things exactly the same. I've been shooting some local pistol matches for the last 3 years and have gone from regular night sights to Trijicon HD's and HD XR's to Dawson fiber optics and a mix of Dawson and HD XR's. What I've learned is I see orange better than yellow or green. So I bought a new G19 gen 5 a couple weeks ago and finally ordered another set of Trijicon HD XR's after shooting Ameriglo's and a few other brands.

The Trijicon HD's were great on anything under 10 yards but shooting plates at 25-50 yards was nearly impossible with the front sight covering the entire plate at distance. In the dark they have no equal as the big bright green dots do stand out. i have no trouble figuring out which dot is the front sight.

Moving to HD XR's with their thinner front sight (.122 vs .144) with the same rear sight with an opening of .169 was odd at first and I just couldn't get used to that much light on the sides of the front post and falsely blamed poor accuracy to that. So I put a Dawson rear on a couple of M&P 9mm pistols I had, along with an Apex barrel and accuracy was great. But I still had an M&P 45 with HD XR's so I pulled it out and shot it again to see which direction I wanted to go for the G19. I was thrilled to see I had no accuracy issues up close or at further ranges, hitting a 10" plate at 55 yards was very easy.

So after installing the HD XR's I decided to take some pics of them.

Usually people say you need a light source and tritium is of no use anyway and I agree you need a light but sometimes sitting in the dark while an intruder is moving through the house with a few lights on tritium is still useful.

And in pitch black they can help you locate your pistol.


One thing I would like to say about the pics is the smaller front vial on the XR's looks tiny but it's because the camera was held right at the rear sight, it's still very easy to see even though the picture doesn't look like it. I shot it today and am very pleased with the whole gun.