6/11/2023 0 Comments Rifle scope crosshairs![]() ![]() This weakened the wires slightly, and in fact the few Duplex reticles that have broken in my Leupolds snapped right at the juncture of the flat and round sections. Leupold did it by flattening the outer portion of the crosswires. The Duplex consisted of four heavier posts surrounding finer crosshairs in the middle, which wasn't a new idea: European scope manufacturers had provided similar reticles for decades, because many European countries allowed shooting longer before sunrise and after sunset than the semi-standard America half-hour-or even all night.īut apparently most American scope manufacturers either didn't think such reticles were necessary for daylight hunting, or couldn't figure out how to make them. Leupold introduced their Duplex reticle in 1962, a little before I started using scopes, but I didn't know anybody who used a Leupold, since they were comparatively pricey compared to the Weavers most hunters used, and a lot more expensive than the "off brand" Japanese scopes then flooding the market. The same principle also applied to dot reticles or various sizes, the reason most hunters (including gun writers) advised using post reticles for woods hunting big game, and crosshairs for smaller game, whether edible or varmint. With heavier crosshairs some aiming precision was lost. If the crosshairs were thin, to aid precise aiming, they tended to disappear in sunless woods, partly because most scopes weren't very bright optically, so there wasn't much contrast between woods and reticle. None of those three reticles worked great for all hunting. This worked pretty well, partly because back then my hair was all black, and the reticle never turned silver or brass when the sun angled over my shoulder when looking through the scope, as crosswires often do. Back then most scopes could still be taken apart by hand, so I managed to get the reticle cell out of the tube and replaced both crosswires with my own hair. But very early rifle scopes often did use actual hair for reticles, and in fact back when I was young and poor one of the crosswires in a cheap 4x scope broke. Some purists point out that "crosshairs" aren't actually hairs, but fine wire, so call them crosswires, a term that's never caught on with the general public, including most shooters. Instead they were actual crosshairs, posts and dots, usually attached to tiny screws on a reticle "cell," a metal ring mounted inside the scope. As far as I know, no reticles back then were etched on glass, as so many are today. ![]() A few other specialized reticles existed, but I never saw any until much later, after starting to write about hunting optics and collecting a few old scopes. Dot reticles were hung on the intersection of thin crosshairs, and usually post reticles had a horizontal crosshair, but not always. This will date me some, but when I started hunting the basic choices in scope reticles were plain crosshairs, post and dot. ![]()
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