What do crosshairs look like

A reticle is defined as a series of fine lines or fibers in the eyepiece of an optical device. Like what you see when you look into a rifle scope. But as shooters and shooting equipment evolves, the need for customizable reticles has increased. Understanding rifle scope reticles can greatly enhance your shooting, especially as you begin to challenge yourself with smaller targets at longer distances.

It can also help significantly in the decision-making process when it comes to selecting a new scope. First, you must focus the reticle to your eye. Rifle scopes are not a one-size-fits-all, much like binoculars. To focus the reticle, look through the scope at an object that has no image, like a bare wall or the sky, so that the reticle is the sharpest image within the scope. If you tried to do this by looking at a target, your eye would have a natural tendency to look at the image first and not the reticle.

Shoulder your rifle, and looking at a blank image, simply turn the eyepiece until the reticle is razor sharp. Glass-etched reticles are far better than copper wire reticles that are typically used. The reticle is actually carved into the glass. Can make thinner and finer lines for long-range precision.

Choosing the type of reticle for your rifle scope, and how it applies to the type of hunting or shooting you plan to use it for, is nearly as important as the scope itself. The reticle is the aiming point in your field of view in most rifle scopes. Also referred to as 'crosshairs' reticles are either glass etched or, most commonly, made out of wire. In our scope reviews , we refer to the reticle as a whole, and any distinctive feature of the reticle, such as the often seen perpendicular lines, we refer to as the cross hairs.

If there is a distinctly more dense, thick, or heavy part of the cross hair, we refer to this part as the post. Hunting reticles are most commonly made out of wire, although the glass-etched reticles are becoming very popular in the hunting community for their durable, precise, and "unbreakable" reputation. The purpose of reticles is to give you a centralized aiming point. Each reticle can be designed to cater to different shooting activities, hunting conditions, and even various types of targets.

For example, there are are reticles for:. Within just these few types of reticles, each optics manufacturer then applies their own name for the same design or style of reticle, such as Nikon's Nikoplex , Leupold's Duplex , and Weaver's Dual X for the standard Duplex style reticle. And, how do you simplify it when Burris Optics has 27 reticle options?

Leupold doesn't make it any easier to navigate the horde when they have over 70 reticles available. Though, to their credit they have created a Reticle Viewer program where you can search their rifle scopes according to your choice of reticle.

Another authoritative reticle maker in the optics industry is Horus. They specialize in some of the most intuitive and advanced reticles available in the market, period. Horus offers incredibly fast and intuitive ballistic reticles that don't require you to holdover or "click" make scope adjustments to get dead on aim.

They provide fast and repeatable results for multiple shots at extreme distances. But, what do reticles look like and what distinctive features make each reticle different? Let's dive right into what has your brain ticking and your scope-drive chuggin'. This reticle has done its job dutifully for many years. It features the single horizontal and single vertical cross hairs that cross in the center to create the aiming point of the reticle. Perhaps one of the simplest reticles in the market.

It features an enclosed circle - a dot, in the center of the reticle. It can have cross hairs that emit from the top, bottom, left, and right of it that extend through the entire field of view.

The most common and simplest reticles are the German 4 and the German 1. You'll see these reticles with thick right, bottom, and left 3, 6, and 9 o'clock cross hairs that taper off towards the center in the original style or with a dot in the center. Our Leupold and Meopta reviews feature rifle scopes with the availability of the German 4 reticle. The Zeiss Victory HT also has a similar 60 illuminated reticle.

It's simple, uncluttered, and is considered the all-purpose reticle. The thicker posts of the four cross hairs will thin out to draw the eye to the center. It's the all-round, perfect reticle for hunting in thicker brush or big game hunting where you need precision to strike the kill zone so it is no wonder the duplex reticle is considered by many to be the best hunting scope reticle. Each manufacturer will have their own name for this standard style, such as Leupold's Duplex , Simmons' Truplex , Nikon's Nikoplex , and Weaver's Dual X reticles to name a few.

This stands for Bullet Drop Compensation and is a ballistics reticle. These reticles are capable of giving you a true point of aim for a known distance to compensate for bullet drop. This is very useful for long range hunters. The distance markers may be hash marks, circles, or dots. The ballistic reticle can be simple and basic with only a few dots or lines on the 6 o'clock cross hair. You can validate bullet drop at the range or with the use of the manufacturer's ballistic online program.

BDC reticles may even get more complex with specially distanced markings along both the 3 and 6 o'clock cross hairs. It could even get more complicated than that with a "Christmas tree" style reticle design spanning across in part or the entire field of view. These ballistic reticles are measured in Miliradians Mrad where each dot on the reticle represents 1 Mrad that is equal to 3. It's not as common as MOA in the hunting category because it was specifically designed as a ranging reticle for the military.

It came about so that you could use mil-dot to calculate the approximate size and the distance of your target as well as bullet drop. While it's an ideal reticle for snipers and extreme long distance target shooters, hunters are finding that it helps them with making extreme long distance hunting shots as well. Statistics for crosshair Look-up Popularity. Style: MLA. English Language Learners Definition of crosshair.

Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words? Love words? Need even more definitions? The first focal plane FFP is at the objective target end of the scope, and the second focal plane SFP is at the ocular eye end of the scope.

This only matters if you are using a variable power scope, because it affects the position of the ranging aids, dots and stadia lines on your reticle.

The key to remembering how the focal plane affects what you see in the scope is that in FFP scopes, the size of the reticle grows with the size of the image. This means that the position of the dots and stadia marks on your reticle stay in the same relative position for whatever you are looking at, such as right behind the shoulder on a big, mature buck or the center of the gas tank of the car you are trying to disable.

With SFP scopes, the reticle size remains constant. This means that as you zoom in on your target, the reticle grows narrower in relation to what you are looking at. This is better if you are looking for detail on your target or want to make a very precise shot. We have covered a lot of information, and I am sure you have a lot to think about in terms of what kind of scope to get for your particular purposes. However, I would like to offer a few pieces of advice:.

If you think in metric units, go with a mil reticle. If you think in yards and feet, go with an MOA reticle. Just make sure both turrets use the same units. If you are going to use your scope and reticle for range estimation, go with a first focal plane scope; if not, a second focal plane scope will work just fine. If you can afford it, go with an illuminated reticle so you can aim with it in any light conditions. MIL-DOT: A type of reticle with dots set apart at predefined milliradian distances to aid in determining distance and in adjusting your aiming point.

Reticles come in a variety of designs, and each has a specific purpose. A variable power scope would be the best choice for this environment.