Red Dot on a Lever Rifle
- Thread starter Dorian Gray
- Start date
on top of it too 
elimsprint
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Kelowna, BC
I love the Burris FFIII on my Ranch Hand mounted on a Pearson rail. Bright 3moa dot and the flashlight work great together for things that go bump in the night.
elimsprint
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Kelowna, BC
They shipped up here when I bought mine, works great! https://universalopticsrail.com/purchase-rossi-model-92-rail-mount
Just sold this rifle an hour ago — the buyer picked it up a few hours after I posted the ad this morning. The ad is now marked “Please remove”, so here’s a pic from the ad.
Burris Fastfire III 3MOA dot on a Henry X .357 Mag. It’s hard to tell but I raised the leather buttcuff using a thick cowhide strip (affixed below it with double-sided tape) to get a better cheekweld with the red dot.
Burris Fastfire III 3MOA dot on a Henry X .357 Mag. It’s hard to tell but I raised the leather buttcuff using a thick cowhide strip (affixed below it with double-sided tape) to get a better cheekweld with the red dot.
Attachments
BigUglyMan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- New Scotland
As much as it might make you feel funny, there's definitely a case to be made for a red dot on a lever gun. If you were the sort of dude that sat in a tree waiting to flatten yogi then that dot sight and close range might well be as good as it gets.
How is that heresy? Far from it, it's totally common. It's not like scout rails on leverguns are popular for mounting scout scopes, they're popular for mounting red dots forward. For a woodland hunting rifle, a zero power red dot has a lot of advantages over a receiver mounted scope - like retaining the ability to carry in one hand around the receiver, and the absolute minimal amount of weight added. I'm 6'4, 200lbs and one of my favourite woodland deer rifles is a Marlin 336 youth with an Aimpoint micro on an XS scout rail. Pretty hard to beat that for handiness and weight.
I have leverguns with tang mounted peeps, barrel mounted open sights, receiver mounted peeps, receiver mounted optics, receiver mounted peeps and forward mounted optics. None are more or less holy than the other, merely horses for courses. Or even just preference. Or for fun.
Not my pic, just representative. I can't concur with the ammo on the butt, unless you're fending off indian attacks. I'd rather a lighter rifle, ammo more protected from the elements and damage and less overall #### on the thing, but it illustrates the handiness of a micro red dot on a lever.
Last edited:
???
One of the chief advantages of red dots is that you can effectively disregard parallax, and the big eye box of a reflex optic frees you up to use a wider variety of positions and welds, and still be effective.
There's a lot of advantages to a chin weld / head up position with a zero power sight. It's significantly more comfortable and faster for me than a lower mount height that requires you to hunch down on the stock and hunt for the dot. With a higher mount you just keep your head where it is and bring the dot to your eye, rather than moving both head and rifle. Go figure, exactly as a shotgun should properly fit you. It's also much better for shooting passively with NV, admittedly a niche requirement outside of combat.
Last edited:
fingers284
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Alberta Cowboy Ranges
That might be relevant in "quick, pray & spray" required element but I mount scopes on my levers for as pin-point accuracy as i can squeeze out of them with my old eyes. I have two red dots and I can take either of them, mount to a rifle, set up on a stack of books for eeze of holding motionless...now put my head behind the scope looking thu the window and just by moving my head, can make that dot move 4 ft on a hundred yard target. That's parallax big time, and why i stress repeatability of immediate cheek lock.
Last edited:
Ahhhhh, no, absolutely not, it applies to shooting a red dot out to any range you can reasonably use it at. Certainly within any lever guns effective range.
If your sights truly have 48 MOA of parallax, then there's something very very wrong with them. The problem is you have garbage optics, not that you need a perfectly consistent cheek weld with a red dot. I'm surprised anyone would accept 48 MOA of parallax, shrug it off as that's how the sight should be, and call it good. Clearly something is not right.
Last edited:
To be clear, a lot of manufacturers my hint at or outright claim zero parallax, but that's nonsense, and impossible. All optics will have parallax to some degree. Really what they're saying is that you can effectively ignore it within the use cases a red dot is intended for. Hitting prairie dogs at 300 yards? Maybe there you're going to notice parallax vs a side focus scope lol... But for shooting 6 - 8" size targets out to as far as your rifle is capable of hitting them, no, it's not a factor.
Mine on the left with an Aimpoint H1 Micro and my buddies on the right with a Leopold 1-4
Those are some very trick rides. Very nice.
I used a Trijicon Reflex on my Marlin 4570 for years built like a tank. Not affected by cold ( no batteries ) Not the best pic of the marlin but all I could find. Day at the beach shooting some of our bear guns.
Last edited:
All my hunting rigs (shotgun, muzzle loader, rifle) have scopes; and I have a single Burris FastFire that does double duty on each one. Perfect for close-up shooting when the light is fading ( and you can’t even see game that’s farther out).
