Not the entire target but the better portion of the bottom half. I know when im searching for small critters i can't see through that mess. And some of them are pretty horrible.
I agree with
@Cr1775 here, and this is coming from a lover of tree reticles.
Many on this site come from a big to medium-sized game perspective, or worse, they are steel or target shooters (at least from the perspective of this particular niche I’m in) .
Big game = deer+
Medium = coyote
I like to shoot prairie dogs or (much) smaller rodents. They are the color of the dirt and oft-parched grass of their surroundings. And they move. A LOT. A LOT LOT LOT. lol
I am fond Vortex’s EBR-2c and 2d reticles, which are quite open-feeling, have .03mil stadia, and have .5mil graduated hashes. Their XLR-2 in the 4.5-22 razor is good and only uses SHORT .2mil graduated hashes on the horizontal (.5mil vertical).
Conversely, I absolutely loathe their EBR-7 and EBR-7c reticles, which, upon first glance, look remarkably similar to the 2c & 2d. But they are graduated in LONG .2 mils horizontally. Those “dripping” hashes coming from the main horizontal stadia are awful and often right where my game is hiding.
And don’t get me started at the Leupold CCH abomination! That was in my first ever decent scope and it just vibrated my eyes while obscuring my targets.
I have a NF in Mil-XT that I will test this summer. Might be on the edge for me, but I like the scope and the .5mil graduated tree dots…but dislike how many numbers litter up the view.
The open circles of that ZCO reticle look interesting, as does the S&B GR2ID (again, that last one might be too much).
What “bad” (to me) reticles have in common is they add too much visual noise and thus sort of camouflage the little buggers I want to shoot.
Why not just use a spotter or a pair of binos? I do! That’s how I find these rodents in the first place! I have a 360° pivoting table and usually have about 160° of pivoting happening in a good pdog field. I constantly scan with a 15x Leica LRF bino while a buddy scans with a spotter.
It’s
refinding them in the riflescope where this visual clutter sometimes messes me up! If it doesn’t outright confound me, then it makes my brain work harder. And for some reason, looking through the bottom of the scope’s view is easier than using the top half.
I think the human’s natural tendency to look down more than up is at play here. That’s why a person hiding up in a tree is harder for people (and deer) to detect.
This is the crucial bit that most fail to understand.
I should note that even my favorite tree reticles make it harder to see these little beasts. I think taking an EBR-2d and cutting off the vert stadia above 2mils on the top and the lopping the tree off below 3mils on the bottom would be a good compromise for small varmint hunters who often use small fast calibers like .204 out to 450-500yds. Maximize one’s view while still giving the hunter the holdovers he needs.
But who am I kidding? I would find it hard to believe that someone will make a reticle like that. Such a thing would not be useful for, say, a .223 or 6br shooting steel past 600 yards…but maybe it would sell to bigger game hunters shooting at “ethical” distances.
So why not use a simple reticle and dial? Remember that bit about the pdogs moving a lot? Targets literally disappear down holes right in front of your eyes. It’s WWII foxholes out there lol. One must pivot to the next target quickly…at least if you like to nail a whole bunch. And that target might be hundreds of yards further away. Holdovers are faster.
