This, I keep hearing, is the age of the rifle scope, yet no one seems to mention that it ought be the age of the shotgun scope (or even the shotgun sight), as well.

If I had to guess, I'd say that most shotguns used for deer hunting with slugs still carry nothing more sophisticated in the way of sights than a brass bead at the end of the barrel. In the not-too-distant dark ages of slug shooting that was all that most guns or ammunition deserved. Today we have guns, slugs, barrels, and choke tubes capable of occasional minute-of-angle groups in the right hands. You owe it to yourself and your quarry to take advantage of the shotgun's new-found potential by, at the very least, fitting your gun with sights.

Whether you buy a dedicated slug gun or put one together using an existing bird gun, there's a wide array of sights available to help put your slugs where you want them to go. If the price of a deer gun or a slug barrel is prohibitive, consider an aftermarket, no-gunsmithing sight for your current barrel. One that I've used recently is the Williams "Slugger," a sight that fits onto the 5/8 inch vent ribs (a 1/4 inch version should be on sale soon) of most shotguns. The rear sight has a U-notch, the front, a blade with a florescent orange bead. The rear sight fully adjusts for elevation and windage.

Installation is simple and takes only a few minutes with a small screwdriver. The underside of the front and rear sights are grooved to fit over the top of the rib while two small plates slide underneath. Four screws then attach the sight to its plate, locking it firmly onto the barrel. The resulting mount is simple and very solid. I received my test set in the spring, so I mounted them on a full-choked turkey gun. I was able to place the center of my pattern right on target when I needed to, despite my having put the gun through the usual predawn bumping and banging during the three-week season.

Two cautions with the Williams sight--if your gun is a recoil operated autoloader with a moving barrel, be sure to mount the rear sight at least five or six inches away from the receiver so the barrel has room to recoil. Second, since the sights are aluminum, you can scratch them pretty easily if you try to install them with anything but the right size screwdriver. The sights themselves, however, will not harm the rib of your gun in any way and are as easily removed as they are installed.

The Slugger sights sell for around $35, roughly the same price as a rifled choke tube. So, for the expenditure of some $70 total, you can convert a bird gun into an accurate deer gun for half to one quarter the price of an iron-sighted slug barrel.

One step up from iron sights is the nearly forgotten peep or aperture sight. Peep sights offer an improved view of the target and are also quite accurate. Olympic-style airgun and smallbore shooters, limited to nontelescopic sights, use apertures exclusively. Many world-class airgunners can consistently put all their shots into one .177-inch hole at 10 meters.

Some of that incredible accuracy is the result of the tiny apertures used on target sights. For field shooting, however, small apertures admit too little light and are difficult to use quickly. We can accept a tradeoff, giving up a little accuracy for speed, and go with a larger aperture. Target discs measure around .05 inch, while holes of .093 inch or even .125 inch admit more light and are easier to use in the field. In fact, many experienced hunters advise simply screwing the disk out of a peep sight, throwing it away and aiming through the threaded hole. Even with a large hole, your eye will still automatically center the front sight. Always remember to look through the rear sight, not at it, and you'll find peep sights quick and easy to use.

Although the golden age of the peep sight is long past, Lyman and Williams still make a variety of models. Leafing through the Williams catalog I find a sight to fit just about any shotgun, although most require drilling and tapping, a $15-$20 operation. One exception is the model WGRS-RU-22, a peep that will fit the factory tapped receivers of Winchester 1200, 1300, and 1400 deer guns.

Those three guns, by the way, are tapped with scope mounting, not peep sights, in mind, as are an increasing number of slug guns these days. Just as peep sights represent a huge improvement over iron sights, so scopes shine in comparison to peeps. At first blush, it might not seem necessary to mount a scope on a gun with a maximum range of 100 yards, but long-range accuracy is only one of the numerous advantages of a scope. Shotguns are the quintessential brush guns, and the best way to shoot through brush is to shoot where the brush isn't. No sight is better than a scope for helping you thread a bullet through gaps in the leaves and twigs.

Shotguns differ from rifles in many ways, but the one that need concern us most is that the barrels are, with a few exceptions, removable. Not only that, they wiggle even when attached to the receiver. It stands to reason, then, that a scope mounted on the barrel will be more accurate than a receiver mounted scope.

That said, let me report that when I tested Winchester's 1300 it shot very nicely despite a receiver mounted scope and a removable barrel. In fact, I was able to shoot groups well under two inches at 50 yards with it. However, these results can't be extrapolated to cover all receiver mounted scopes, since accuracy will vary from gun to gun depending on the amount of play between barrel and receiver.

Owners of Auto-5s or other guns with shuffling barrels must use a receiver mount. Aftermarket, no-gunsmithing receiver mounts, like the KwikMount, B-Square, Tasco and others attach using the trigger assembly pins or screws on the gun's receiver. I've tried both B-Squares and KwikMounts on my Auto-5 and find that neither is difficult to install and they both fit very solidly onto the gun. Like the Williams "Sluggers", these aftermarket mounts cost relatively little ($20-$40) and provide a low cost alternative to a new slug gun.

A scope mounted on a removable barrel has two advantages: first, it is theoretically more accurate, and second, the scope and barrel can be removed as a unit after deer season is over and chances are good that the gun will shoot to the same point of impact next year. New barrels from Remington, Hastings, and Mossberg allow the use of normal eye relief scopes with barrel mounts. In the past, as with the first generation of Hastings scope mount barrels and the old Ithaca 51 deer guns, barrel mounts required long relief scopes, which translates into a much smaller field of view. To compare two scopes, both by Burris, the 1.5x Extended Eye Relief Long Gun Scope offers a 22-foot field of view at 100 yards, while the 2.5x Shotgun Scope has a 55-foot field of view--2 1/2 times more than the less powerful long relief scope--at the same distance.

Generally speaking, the lower powers--1.5x, 2.5x--are best for close-range deer hunting conditions, although a 4x scope would be fine, too, if you planned to take slightly longer shots at undisturbed deer. There are even some 1x-4x and 2x-7x variables on the market designed expressly for shotguns if you can't make up your mind between higher and lower powers.

An accurately scoped shotgun loaded with sabot style slugs is certainly a 100-yard deer gun, possibly even a 125-yard gun. Sighted in for 100 yards (according to Winchester figures) a Super-X BRI will print 3.2 inches high at 50 yards, 5.1 inches low at 125, while a Foster-type slug zeroed at 50 yards will be 2 inches high at 25 yards, 5.5 inches low at 100.

Finally, if you do fit your shotgun with a scope, consider building up the comb so you can cheek the stock properly and still see through the scope. There are a variety of lace-on and Velcro pads available, many of them quickly installed and as quickly removed. Even some slug guns still have stocks better suited to bird hunting and will benefit from some moleskin on the stock. I'm not just being fussy about gun fit here, either. If you have to raise your head high off the stock to aim your gun you will be slower, less precise, and will feel more recoil than if you can mount the gun comfortably against your cheek.

Deer are common enough now that we take them for granted--I'm too young by many years to remember when the mere sighting of a buck was cause for conversation. But no matter how common deer may become, they deserve more than to be shot at in a haphazard way with guns better suited to geese or quail.