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b y D av i D E . P E t z a l
Simple Precision Aimpoint goes after the centerfire hunter The Aimpoint Hunter 34L red-dot sight is a precision instrument. Don’t let the lack of magnification fool you.
W
hen riflescopes first emerged from the primordial slime (or the optical equivalent thereof ), they were small, light, lowpowered and designed to appeal to a generation of shooters who were used to iron sights and did not want bulk, weight and lots of magnification. Now we’ve swung to the other end of the spectrum, and it’s hard to sell a scope that can’t direct fire for a 16-inch naval gun and is nearly as big as same. But for all their weight, bulk, power and complexity, I have grave doubts that modern scopes help shooters all that much. What the people who buy them find is that in the real world, most shots at game are at 200 yards or less and must be taken fast off an unsteady rest (or no rest at all). Here, a mega-scope not only doesn’t help, but is actually a handicap. Aimpoint wants to end the madness. The company has been around since 1975, and has, among other things, just sold its one-millionth red-dot sight to the military. Red dots have long been standard equipment on handguns, MSRs and slug guns, and now Aimpoint wants to put them on centerfire hunting rifles. To that end, they’ve come up with the Hunter series, which look like conventional riflescopes. There are four Hunters: the H34S and H34L (short and long) and the H30S and H30L. The 34 scopes have 34mm tubes; the 30s have 30mm tubes. All four enjoy the same advantages that caused the U.S. Military to switch from iron sights after
235 years. First, a red dot is the fastest means of aiming known to man. Second, Aimpoints are ungodly tough. They lack the complex mechanical innards of an optical scope, and they’ve survived fire, prolonged immersion, several wars and anything else you care to name. They do not magnify the target, but neither do they require the user to have precise eye alignment and correct eye relief. They do not require parallax adjustment. They do not need their vertical crosshair at true vertical, since there is no vertical crosshair. In short, Aimpoints lack everything that can
go wrong with a conventional scope. Sighting through a zero-magnification scope can be daunting at first to a person who is deeply committed to lots of Xs. (Some of you old-timers may remember the Bushnell ad that said, “Your deer will look 18 feet tall.”) But there is a compensating factor. When you remove all the magnification, you discover that the wobbles and jerks, as well as the tics and twitches and jumps and hiccups, which occurred nonstop with a conventional sight are gone. Suddenly, you can hold your rifle steady—or almost entirely so. I wanted to see how well I shot with an Aimpoint, so I got a Hunter 34L and mounted it on a Savage target .22 for which I had an actual scoring record. Shooting off hand with a conventional scope set at 4X at a 50-yard NRA Slow Fire pistol target set at 100 yards, I averaged 84 out of 100 points. Firing with the Hunter, I averaged 88. Kneeling, using a military sling, I could get into the mid-90s. On one occasion there was a strong left to right wind blowing, and by adjusting the red dot very fine, I found I could hold at 9 o’clock on the bull and the breeze would take the bullets into the black in the center, or just slightly to the right. In short, you can shoot with considerable precision. About price: The real-world cost of the Hunter series is about $770. These sights are not cheap because “simple” is not synonymous with “inexpensive.” They are first-rate instruments and priced about the same as conventional scopes of equal quality. To put it in somewhat different terms, ask a skeptical customer if he’s priced a pair of hearing aids lately. If he hasn’t, you can tell him that they go for about $2,500 per ear, and that highly sophisticated circuitry does not come cheap, either there or in a red-dot sight. But the most important thing to tell him is that he will almost certainly shoot better. Now, that’s what you buy a sight for, isn’t it? (877-246-7646; aimpoint.com)
Selling Tip
You notice I haven’t talked about battery life, which is one of the things customers whine about when considering an electronic sight. (“What if I forget and leave it on?”) That’s because with the Aimpoint Hunter, battery life is not a problem; the battery can stay on for two years before it goes dead. Two years is a fairly long hunt or trip to the range. Anyway, in two years, a dead battery may be the least of anyone’s problems.
50 ❚ ShoT BuSineSS ❚ june/july 2011
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