Rear sights on shotguns can be quite valuable, but nearly anytime a shotgun has a rear sight, it’s a ghost ring. What if we trimmed that ghost ring in half? I first heard this idea from Rob Haught, a shotgun maestro, who used this setup on his guns. Aridus Industries released the CROM with the Haught mod to provide this, and now RX Arms has produced a simple drop-in half sight for the Benelli M4.
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Sights on shotguns can be an interesting conversation. Due to the weapon’s variety of projectile types and use cases, the sights on a shotgun can vary in usefulness. On a lot of tactical shotguns, your options are a bead or ghost rings. For me, both are fine, but neither is optimal. I like the speed of a bead and the precision of ghost ring sights.
Typically, I like open-style rifle sights positioned on the barrel, but in an age of red dots, no one is going to make the investment to bring those back. The Half Sight from RX Arms isn’t a rifle sight, but it turned out to be a fairly simple way to have my cake and eat it too.
The RX Arms Half Sight
The Half Sight is exactly what it sounds like. Take your typical ghost ring and cut it in half. That’s it. You still get a rear sight and the benefits of better alignment for precision shots. At the same time, you can ignore the rear sight and use the front sight much like a bead sight. These are the benefits that a lot of rifle-style sights offer shotgun users.
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The Half Sight replaces the standard ghost ring you find on Benellis. It’s simple to install. Use a flathead to remove the standard rear sight. Use the same flathead to install the new Half Sight. It took all of two minutes to complete.
Once installed, you can see the bottom and edges to allow for easy alignment with the front sight. This gives us the benefits of a rear sight when engaging with slugs or at longer buckshot ranges with something like FliteControl.
When dispensing buckshot up close, we can ignore the rear sight completely. Get the front on target with a flash sight picture and pull the trigger. The close range makes it harder to miss, and the presence of buckshot hitting the body helps ensure that, at the very least, you’re causing massive damage.
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By the Numbers
I took the Half Sight to the range with some slugs and buckshot to give it a spin at multiple ranges. I took another Benelli with ghost ring sights with me to compare the two side by side. This required me to turn off the red dots and go iron-free like it was 1999.
I started at 50 yards with an 8-inch gong and slugs. I ran myself against a timer and fired one round from the low ready with each gun. The times were nearly identical, but so was the accuracy.
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I could easily use the sides of the Half Sight and align with the front sight to make my hits. I didn’t notice any major difference in accuracy when I created some three-round groups on paper, but when grouping on paper, I was a little quicker with the ghost rings.
When I switched to buckshot and shot from 5 to 15 yards, we began to see some differences in time. During ready-up drills, I was able to shave up to a 10th of a second off my time while still putting buckshot into the A-zone of the target. Follow-up shots for controlled pairs felt easier since the front sight came into view a fraction of a second faster.
Beyond The Range
I turned the red dots off, but turned them on to confirm a suspicion I had. The trimmed Half Sight predictably cleared up my view through the window, creating a clear sight picture through the red dot.
Later on, after the sun went down and I was almost tucked into bed, I locked the rear bolt, made sure the gun was empty, and started looking around. A major downside of ghost rings is their low-light performance; they tend to block light, making it harder to shoot quickly and effectively.
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The Half Sight doesn’t have those problems. It’s easy to see the front sight and quick to get behind. My wife would kill me if I started launching rounds out a window to test it, but I’m betting it’s easier to track the front sight between recoil impulses.
Shotguns are often used at the same range as pistols. What kind of sights do we use on pistols? Well, yeah, red dots, but other than red dots? Open sights. For most home defense shotguns, open sights just make more sense. Here’s to hoping the Half Sight comes to platforms outside of the Benelli M4.
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