This past summer I had a chance to visit Montana to ride Honda off-road vehicles and play with some firearms for our sister site, ATV.com. While I wrote about that experience here, I also had a chance to play with a prototype laser site from Crimson Trace that I wasn’t allowed to write about until now – the Crimson Trace Lasersaddle LS-250 for Mossberg Shockwave receivers.

We were kept pretty busy during the day riding Honda Pioneer UTVs around and shooting firearms from Thompson/Center, Noreen Firearms and Mossberg, but we were left in the dark about what Crimson Trace had in store until, well, it got dark.

In the early part of the day I had an opportunity to shoot at some clays with both the Mossberg Shockwave 500 and 590. If I’m being honest, I struggled to aim precisely without a shoulder stock and had minimal success. The birdshead grip makes for a much more compact weapon, but accuracy (for me at least) suffers. But this is what makes the Crimson Trace Lasersaddle LS-250 system so interesting.

Initial Reaction

To my largely untrained eye (I don’t have nearly as much firearm experience as the other contributors to this site), the Crimson Trace Lasersaddle LS-250 looks right at home on the Mossberg Shockwave. Located on the receiver side and upper area, it doesn’t add much in the way of excess bulk to what is a very slimmed down weapon. Even with the Lasersaddle installed, you can still install an accessory rail on top of the Shockwave.

Getting comfortable with the operation of the Lasersaddle did not take long at all. There is a master on/off switch, along with three different activation pads to quickly turn the laser on or off without much fumbling.

Crimson Trace set up the LS-250 ahead of time, so I did not have a chance to sight it in myself. However, in theory this looks fairly simple. There is a set screw on top that allows you to adjust elevation and another on the right side that allows for windage adjustments.

Does it Work?

Though having the Crimson Trace Lasersaddle installed on the Mossberg Shockwave won’t help me shoot clays any better (fortunately, there are much better tools for the job), it proved hugely helpful with overall accuracy.

Once you get the Lasersaddle properly sighted in, it’s a whole lot easier to hit what you are aiming at with the Shockwave. I still don’t feel as steady as I would with a shotgun equipped with a shoulder stock, but you acquire the target awfully fast with a green or red laser showing the way.

Details

Crimson Trace offers two different versions of the Lasersaddle – the LS-250 (red) and LS-250G (green). Both are plenty visible at night, but the green laser is much easier to see during daylight hours. The LS-250 retails for $169, while the LS-250G has an MSRP of $219.

While I didn’t get to test out the battery life myself, Crimson Trace says the Lasersaddle LS-250 offers up four hours of battery life, compared to two hours for the LS-250G. The good news is that LS-250 is covered by Crimson Trace’s “Free Batteries For Life” program. It also comes with a standard three-year warranty.