What’s the last thing you see before you pull the trigger? The reticle!
I’ll bet most of us tend to give only passing thought to reticle selection, but there’s a reason that there are somewhere over 96.2 billion reticle designs floating around out there. They’re designed for specific purposes. For example, a thick, course, reticle might be useful for visibility in lower light and brushy short-range hunting conditions. A reticle with very fine crosshairs will allow you to aim very, very precisely at longer distances. And there are a million other variations for different purposes.
Here, we’re going to take a look at a basic reticle types and help clarify when you would choose one design over another. The primary consideration for choosing an effective reticle is to think about the most common application for that specific optic. In other words, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to hunt in thick woods? Are you going to compete in 3-Gun? Do you want it for a home defense rifle? Are you going to use it for accuracy competition? Just plinking? Or something else entirely? Once you have your most common anticipated use nailed down, the universe of sensible reticles types gets much smaller.
Since there are so many types of reticles, let’s create some categories by general type so we can look at situations where each general style will excel.
As the name implies, a dot reticle isn’t very complicated. In fact, it’s just a dot. Most (probably the vast majority) that you’ll find are illuminated regardless of the technology used to put the dot on the glass. The Burris FastFire is a classic example of this type of reticle. With zero magnification and no tube to interfere with the field of view, it offers great overall visibility and fast sighting. You’ll find red dot reticles with different sized dots from two MOA to eight MOA depending on the intended application. A smaller dot will provide more precision at longer ranges at the sacrifice of speed and high visibility at shorter range.
When to choose: A need for speed, zero or very low magnification, and ranges less than 100 yards are the ideal situations for a simple red dot, although there’s no reason you can’t stretch out to a couple of hundred yards with a small and precise dot.
What’s a “duplex” reticle? If you consider the example we discussed at the beginning of this article, thick reticle bars for visibility and fine ones for precision, a duplex reticle is a combination of both. The outer sections of the crosshairs are thick for visibility and speed, while the inner section is fine for precision. A pure duplex reticle has no other horizontal of vertical hash marks. It’s just a set of crosshairs, although they vary in width.
When to choose: Duplex reticles are great for short to moderate range hunting scenarios. As many rifle cartridges shoot “flat” from zero to 200 yards or so, depending on how you zero, there is no need to make significant turret or holdover adjustment to hit a target within that range. In the woods, the thick outer bars of the duplex are easy to pick up. Once you acquire the outline of the reticle, it’s easier to see the finer crosshairs in the middle to establish a precise point of aim. Since there are no range compensation marks, this design is slower to adjust for long range shots as you have to adjust turrets to get the crosshairs right on target.