As I have mentioned previously, I am looking to shoot in a couple of NRL Hunter competitions in 2025.  I have many reasons for that: preparation for the Team Challenge, leading by example (trying to get my kids interested) and simply having fun are all contributing factors.  The "trying to get my kids interested" is what usually gets me a hall pass from my wife, so that one is an integratl part of the reasoning.

One aspect of this whole decision process that needs to be addressed is the almost inevitable paralysis by analysis that every gear junkie is bound to develop when looking at the options.

Given my comparative inexperience and relatively limited shooting skills, I think my best bet is to not overthink it.  Just set up a rifle for the Open Heavy class and go practice.  I intend to shoot 6.5CM, hopefully with factory ammo.  Given that, a ltitle extra weight for controlling recoil and having good information for the second shot after I miss the first one, should be beneficial. 

On the other hand, since there are many ways to win the race for the last place, I could not help myself and tentatively configured rifles (on paper for now) for both Open Heavy and Open Light.  I plan to build them all up exactly as described below and figure out how contorted of a shooting position my aging joints can tolerate with each one.

The idea, for now, was to simply look at what I have and play with different configurations.

I was at the range again...

It appears that I start many of my posts with that phrase.  I should probably stop making that disclaimer.  At this point it should be abundantly apparent that I spend a lot of time at the range.

I always have a good reason.  I cleaned the barrel of my muzzleloader yesterday and needed to make a couple of fouling shots before I go hunting tomorrow.  Since I was there anyway, I figured I should do some tripod shooting practice, so I brought one of my ARs with me.  It is an unusual AR since it has a very unique AlSiC wrapped barrel.  AlSiC (Aluminum Silicon Carbide) is an interesting material that can be tuned to perfectly match thermal expansion of whatever it is wrapped around.  It has an incredibly high thermal conductivity coefficient, so it absorbs heat very fast and sheds it equally quickly.  There was a company looking to make barrels where isntead of carbon fiber, a thin steel barrel is wrapped in AlSiC.  The project did not pan out (they vanished on me at some point), but they did make me one barrel.  It has an intereting property in that it seems to exhibit very little POI shift with heat.  It is not the most accurate barrel I have, but it is accurate enough and it is consistent.  It runs a little on the slow side, but it works.  Somehow this rifle ended up being the test bed for the Delta Stryker 3.5-21x44, which happens to be one of my favourite precision gas gun scopes, so I shoot this rifle a lot.  So much so that I think I am going to go swap out the Bootleg Camlock handguard currently on it for the 12" Q Honey Badger handguard I have.  For what it is worth, while I really like the adjustable bolt carriers from Bootleg, their Camlock handguard is a wobbly, bendy, slidy piece of crap.

There are many excellent handguards on the market.  I tend to default to the ones from Q more often than not, but I have several I like from BMC, Aero, MI, etc.  They are all good.  They all work.  Bootleg's Camlock does not stay put.  The engagement of the handguard to the barrel nut is poorly designed.

Moving on...  after hitting the 220 yard plate a couple of times with the iron sighted muzzleloader, I decreed it "good enough to take a shot at a mule deer on an off chance I see one" and switched to the AR-15.

With cheap 55gr ammo, I keep my practice to within 450 yards or so.  The range where I shoot has conveniently placed a bunch of plates at ~430 yards for me to practice on.  I verified zero from the bench (I move stuff around so much, that it is good practice) and transitioned to shooting off of a tripod.

For some reason, I have a very hard time taking a good picture of this reticle handheld.  I'll have to get my fixtures out.  Either way, the above pictuer was taken on 21x and the hangers you see at the bottom left quadrant are at !430 yards.  The illumination is on max setting and is visible but not nuclear on a bright New Mexico day.  Only the main stadia are illuminated, which I like.

Part of routine practice is to shoot offhand using both the primary optic (on low power) and secondary optic.  That's when it dawned on me that I have never really talked much about the SeeAll Sight that I use for redunduncy on a few guns.

https://www.seeallsights.com/

It is a weird looking thing that sorta straddles the gap between iron sights and red dot sights.  It found its home somewhere in that "no mand's land".  It works and it is probably a better option than irons, especially under challenging light conditions.  However, modern red dot sights walk all over it.  Still, I have several of these, which brings up an obvious question: why?

There is really one main reason: they are cheap.  If you check on them through the year and have a little patience, you wil stumble onto some sort of a half off sale.  If that happens late at night after you have been exploring some of the finer qualities of your bourbon collection, you might end up with half a dozen of them.  Ask me how I know.

The sight is very simple.  It is, essentially, a block of greenish edge glow material, a reticle etched on it and a simple lens to project that reticle to your eye.  Some also have tritium for night time use.  They have a couple of picatinny mount versions and a couple of direct mount versions (RMR and RMS).  I have a tleast one of each.  Keeping them properly mounted seems to require a good amount of loctite, but once everything is set up, they stay put and stay zeroed.

The one you are looking at is the RMR base one sitting on Swampfox' rather excellent offset mount.  

Here are the strenghts and weakness of this thing in a nutshell.

Strengths:

-small, light, cheap

-focus on the target, not on the aiming point (like on a red dot)

-no batteries

-forgiving of eye astigmatism

Weaknesses:

-open design that does not do great in inclement weather

-you bisect the target with the top edge of the sight, so the bottom half of the sight picture is blocked

-eye position is not terribly forgiving (kinda like the irons)

-accuracy with these is tricky

If you are setting up an offset optic to use as a primary sight at close range, this is not a good option for you.  

If this is mostly something to get you a little redunduncy, it is not a bad option.  In practical terms, I struggle shooting with this thing beyond 100 yards and I am much happier with it inside of 50.  I can shoot it relatively quickly, but it is distinctly slower than the red dot.  I do not see any speed advantage with this thing over irons unless it is pitch black.  If there is enough light to see the target, there is enough light for the irons and for the SeeAll sight.

Now, if your eyes have a hard time focusing on the front sight, the SeeAll Sight might work a lot better for you. 

Before you all rush out to buy one of these, do keep in mind that you can pick up RS-15 from Primary Arms for $120 right now.  https://alnk.to/9buj4aU  RS-15 is a vastly superior sight to the SeeAll.

However, if you stumble onto a sale where SeeAll sights are going for a $100 or so around Black Friday, it might not be a bad idea to pick one up.  Perhaps, it will agree nicely with your eyes.

Taking a photo of a proper sight picture with this thing turned out to be pretty difficult:

They do have a couple of decent picture with the two available reticle on their website.  

Once I get some of my fixturing set up, I'll take a couple of better pictures and update this post. 

Either way, I know that my take on these sights is a little bipolar.  On one hand, in the grand scheme of things, I am really not a fan.  The way I shoot offhand, I like to drive the gun onto the target and that works very well with red dot sights and not very well with irons or the SeeAll sight.  On the other hand, I have a lot of guns. I like having backup optics on them.  SeeAll Sights do work.  They are wonky, but they work.

This weekend is my last "tag" hunt of the year.  4th choice deer hunt in a place that is unlikely to have any deer.  

On top of that, it is a muzzleloader only hunt and muzzleloaders in New Mexico are now "iron sights only".

I plan to head out Friday and return no later than Sunday night.  Technically, I have five days for this hunt.  Practically, I rather like being married, so a weekend is all I get.  The unit where I'll be hunting is mostly private land.  After significant amount of e-scouting, I think I converged on an area that looks like it will be my best bet.  Temperatures will get into the mid-to-high 80s this weekend, so snake gaters it is.  I suspect all self-respecting deer will be taking a nap somewhere during the day, so my best bet is to do a lot of glassing around dusk and dawn and look for water.