Astigmatism and Red Dots: Addressing misconceptions about using red dot sights

Astigmatism

What's up guys? So today I wanted to talk about something that plagues people and also is used as an excuse for people not using bread dots, and they're like, I need to use my irons only for this reason. The other thing is most people see it with rifles too, but just deal with it because a rifle dot makes 'em feel better. I don't know. But most of all, there's an issue with their eyeballs called astigmatism. Now, astigmatism is just an irregularity in the curvature of the lens in your eye. So what that means is you got a bumpy lens. What it really means is just you see things that are sent to you with light, funny, just slightly, and that's why we see different dots when we're looking through these things. Now, quick story time. One of my buddies, we were out shooting and we went all the way back to 25 yards and we were shooting at a 12 inch steel plate, and he was having a lot of issues getting hits.

I know he's a good shooter. He's shot for, I don't know, years with me now, and I was wondering what the hell he was seeing. What he was seeing with his dot when I asked him to draw it was that he saw Mickey Mouse. Now being in Florida, that kind of makes sense, but we're not in Orlando. So I was like, okay, you see Mickey Mouse, what part of Mickey Mouse are you aiming with? He's like the whole thing, right? So he's using this on a 12 inch plate out of 25 yards. Really hard do because he doesn't have an exact point of aim. It's like trying to use your fist to aim something, and you have all these different points and different reference points on your fist. Now that doesn't compute with your mind properly. Now, what I told him was, Hey, let's try something.

If he's down for it, let's re zero your gun. Yes, re zero, everybody's plague. Get comfortable with zeroing. Re zero your gun to one of the ears on Mickey Mouse. Now, I asked him which ear was more prevalent and which one was more sharp, that looked more crisp at different distances. And we looked at it, we tried it out, and it ended up being this guy. So that little right ear on Mickey Mouse's head is what we went for. So we went ahead, we zeroed him to that. We took it back to 25 yards and we shot, and it was awesome. He shot fine. He got all his hits, except for I think one or two. That was probably shooter error, not really his zero, because he had consistently shot quite a few before and after that. So to show that it's just another method that you could possibly do.

 Be Consistent

If you are having astigmatism or problems with astigmatism and you have a good reference of a specific spot that's always consistently there, try it. Hey, why not? It may give you a better reference point on shooting with your dot that gives you more accuracy at distance and helps you out with that little problem that you have with astigmatism. Now, something else that dawned on me with this, because I asked him to look through my dot and see what he sees. He looked through mine and he said that it wasn't as bad. Okay, that means he's seeing something different. Then I looked at his RMR and he's using an RMR oh seven, alright, RMR oh seven is a six MOA dot, I think 6.5. That's pretty big. That's a big MOA dot. Now I'm using an RMO nine, which is the one MOA dot. So what ended up happening is when I looked at his dot, my tumor seemed bigger.

Apparent visual reference

What it was is an apparent visual reference to the actual size of the.is causing the astigmatism to look worse or better depending on what you're doing and what you're looking at. But the dot size actually mattered. When he looked at mine, he could barely see his little Mickey Mouse ears, meaning my smaller.is giving him the appearance of less astigmatism or just the.so small that he can't see the little ears as well, if that makes sense. So maybe something to try. If you have severe astigmatism, move over to A one MOA dot and try it out. Now, if your astigmatism is a little worse than this even, and you see multiple clusters or something like that, or striping, there may be something where you'd have to go ahead and figure out one, maybe getting your eyes fixed or two, find a reference point on there just like we did with his Mickey Mouse ear.

Use that zero to it, get to it. Try it out. So just like anything else, try it. See if it works for you. If you have a buddy with astigmatism, let him know. Maybe he wants to see this video, maybe he wants to try this method. Also, look through somebody else's optic that has a smaller dot of some sort, whether the 3.25, which is the RMO six or the RMO9, which is one MOA. So give it a try. Something to think about. Guys, hope this helps. And hey, you never know. You may change somebody's life a little bit .

Credit: Kinetic Consulting

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