By coincidence, I've been playing with how visible various reticles are in low light, including three Vortex non-illuminated reticles. Obviously it depends on the target, and since it's black bear season here I tried them by aiming at one of my black bear hides in dim light (and yes, it was a black black-bear hide). None of the Vortex reticles worked very well, both because the center of the reticles was so thin, but because the thick portions were all a LONG way from the center--which seems to be a trend over the past few years. The thicker parts of reticles (like Leupold's Duplex) were added to make aiming easier in dim light, since plain, thin crosshairs sucked. But nowadays several manufacturers offer reticles with the thick portion so far from the thin center that we might as well be using crosshairs.
Of course, the thinner reticles probably would have worked just fine on deer in dim light, since deer aren't black. But that wasn't what I was testing, so I may need to repeat the testing with hides from other animals.
Also found that the often-denigrated wire reticles tended to be more visible than etched reticles, perhaps because they tend to be thicker. But also need to do some more testing before coming to any conclusion about that.
