Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns RMR for 10mm 1911

I have changed directions and decided that the Fusion Pro Series 10mm will be sent you Fusion to have it milled for an RMR. I will still have them bobtail it and give it a two tone finish. The question is which RMR style sight to get. The primary use will be for hunting but I would also like to try some pin shooting with it. The hunting will be from a blind or tree stand and 50 yds or less for deer, pigs and coyotes. I do not have any real experience with them so need some suggestions. Fusion said the Vortex is the most popular ones that they have sent in for mounting. Maybe the Vortex or Sig Romeo. The Trijicons are nice but while I am not wanting to be cheap I have spent a lot on guns lately.

If you say RMR - that is the Trijicon. It's not a generic term for "red dot". Personally I would stick with the 3.25 moa RMR, or maybe the Holosun in the same mounting pattern if money was really an issue since it's reported to hold up pretty well. A distant third choice would be the Leupold DPP, but the body is so big, it seems ungainly on a 1911 slide.

I would not waste my money on a Vortex for that. You'll be taking advantage of their warranty if you shoot it much. The Sig Romeo isn't any better. There are a lot of junk red dots out there, and some are pretty expensive. You aren't saving any money in the long run by buying those, and do yourself a disservice if you have the slide milled for them.

If money is a big deal, buy the holosun. I would not run the vortex or sig

I do know an RMR is a Trijicon but when you say RMR everyone knows what type of sight you are talking about whereas when I say red dot a lot of people think of the big tube style sights. I will look at the Holosun.

RMR has become like Kleenex. Brand name that becomes part of the language to describe a type of product.

Some things get better with age, but eyes aren't one of them. I had some Trijicon night sights on my 1911 and years later they finally went out, so I put an RMR 3.5 minute Trijicon on my .45 instead. That handgun has never shot so accurately and I wish that I had installed that red dot sight years ago. Trijicon is making an SRO red dot sight with a little larger window now and for hunting where quicker sight acquisition is needed, I might look at that one instead of the RMR. I didn't want to have my slide milled and ordered a dovetail RMR mount that fit in the rear sight dovetail slot. Works perfectly.

I’d consider having it milled for adapter plates rather than a specific dot. Dots are getting better every year and I wouldn’t want to get married to one until I had some experience with them to know what I wanted.

But if I had one milled I’d do the RMR footprint and then decide on an RMR or SRO.

Avoid Vortex like the plague.

Not really. Among people who are familiar with this stuff, RMR means RMR. It's only the low-information group who think it's a generic term for all the different brands. Up until they started getting popular the last couple years, nobody used RMR as a generic term for red dot.

What's the problem with Vortex? First I've heard a negative comment here about it. I've had a Vortex Sparc II for a couple of years, and it seems to work pretty well. Are they delicate?

Words mean things. We are losing our language because of two things. 1) Political correctness; and, 2) laziness.

On to the OP's inquiry. I would suggest an RMR or a Shield. I base this on both personal experience with the RMR, the Shield, a couple of Vortex, Burris and Leupold and in significant research myself. Good luck on whatever you decide. Oh, I should ad that the Burris Fastfire II that I used also functioned perfectly.

You can correct me if I am mistaken, but I have been told that holosun and sig are built by the same company and with the same parts. But having said that, I have been proven wrong many times before. Just ask my wife.

What have been some of the negative experiences folks here have had with the Vortex brand?

No response equals you're FOS.

Whatever you do, don't wipe off your rmr with a Kleenex.

I had one where one day, after about 500 +/- total rounds and three months of use, the dot just disappeared and would never come on again. I sent it to Vortex. They replaced it immediately. The replacement functioned flawlessly for about 200 to 300 rounds and was still working when I sold it along with the pistol on which it was mounted. As a caveat, according to the homunculus from Alaska, I am still FOS.

I’ve personally see a failure rate over 50% for vortex red dots. The number of failures is now nearing three digits.

But I’m super glad that your sample of one is working so well.

That is why I asked. I appreciate the experience of others. I know people that swear the RIA is great but my personal experience with only one was enough to turn me off. Same with Kimber. I have tried several different brands of scopes and there are several that will never grace my guns. I guess I will end up biting the bullet and probably go with an actual RMR. I have had great luck with their Accupoint scopes and they are my favorite for ARs and dangerous game rifles. I love their triangle reticle. I guess if you are going to spend that much on a pistol you don’t want to skimp on optics

What MOA size dot is appropriate for this setup? I don’t see shooting at anything past 75 yds and that would only be at coyote or pigs. I will keep deer shots at 50 or under

Pacecars, I prefer/recommend the 3.25 moa dot. The 6.5 moa is OK, but just larger than I prefer although I do have one on my carry gun. It's not a big enough difference to get rid of one and buy the other. There is a 1 moa option too, but on the single sample I tried, I felt like it was just a little too small.

And +1 to Blue's response on the Vortex. I haven't used as many, but in my circle of friends and training partners, at least half of the slide-mounted Vortex sights have died during fairly light duty use. Speaking of the slide mounted optics here. They also have the stupid buttons sticking out to one side; one can make that work OK but it's not ideal.

As for the Holosun and Sig optics being the same - that might be true for one of the tube sights that is basically an Aimpoint Micro clone (I can't confirm they are the same, but they do look similar), but it's definitely not true for all of them, and is not true of the slide mounted optics. The Sig Romeo sights do not have a good reputation for pistol slide mounted durability.

Thanks for the reply.

I've got a couple of 3.25MOA Leupolds, a 6.5MOA RMR, and a 5MOA SRO.

Of them I prefer the larger dots. I like being able to turn the brightness down and still have a useable dot. Turning the Leupold up makes the dot bloom and it's not as precise to use. In use I can't tell the difference between the 6.5 and 5.

You might see different results with the 3.25 RMR than the Leupold. Then again, that's part of the problem with using a fixed brightness optic and setting it too high, as we've talked about before. I never have to deal with blooming dots in my RMRs since I don't use them that way; IMO using a fixed brightness instead of the auto setting causes a lot more problem than it solves.

In the training group I participate in, most of them started with the larger dots and have switched to the smaller dots on the RMR sights. Apparently for guys with astigmatism, the smaller dot is easier to use with less tendency to distort in their vision.

There used to be a common argument that the larger dots were faster to aquire, but the 3.25 dot is just as quick to pick up as the 6.5.