Second shotgun sight - a bead

Yesterday I showed what my Benelli shotgun has mounted as a sight. Today I pulled an older shotgun out of my vault to show the sights most shotguns came with from the factory... a bead.

That little tiny bead, almost the size of a BB pellet, is what you use as a forward sight on your shotgun. Unlike rifles and handguns, though, the act of sighting a shotgun is a little different.



A fantastic article by Field and Stream, written by by Philip Bourjaily, discusses the purpose of a bead on a shotgun as opposed to a "regular" sight.

"To hit with a shotgun, you must keep your eye on the target while the barrel of the gun registers as a blurred smudge in your peripheral vision. That’s where the bead comes in. Don’t think of it as a sight; it’s more like the red handkerchief you tie on a long 2x4 sticking out of the bed of your truck. It serves as a reference, as a flag or marker, so you’re aware of the muzzle as you bear down on the target. You should never carefully measure leads, but the front bead can help you see in an instant when you’ve got the right gap between barrel and bird."

The Field and Stream article is a great summary about the bead on shotguns, and is worth the quick read if you are curious on the why it is also called a "miss-me" bead.

-end-