A senior representative of one European scope company confided to me, on a hunting trip, that when actually hunting and taking a shot at long range, he ignored the multiple lines of which his company was so proud and simply used the main crosshair and held a little high.

This is an instinctive approach that dates back centuries, which most of us have used since childhood, and which is still the fastest. It may not be the most accurate in terms of actual inches, but it is the most practical in real life.

All of this is not to say the crosshair, dot or duplex is the best reticle design for all time. The other great advance in scope technology has been illuminated reticles, which introduce a whole new range of possibilities. Since they first appeared a decade ago, illuminated designs have been refined and become highly usable.

The main knock on the early ones was the difficulty of getting the right level of illumination under changing light conditions. Generally, one needed less illumination, not more. A too-bright reticle destroys night vision, leaving you able to see the reticle but nothing else.

Trijicon uses tritium, a nuclear isotope, to illuminate its reticles, which are available either as a crosshair or as a tiny tritium triangle atop a post. In low light, you see just the center of the crosshair, or the triangle; in bright light, they are the familiar black.

Generally speaking, I have found that illumination works best with unorthodox reticles. Rather than trying to light up a crosshair or duplex, it is better to design a reticle specifically to make best use of illumination. I have a couple of scopes that make use of these new technologies that I use for special purposes, and they are growing on me. Rapidly.