Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Hard to find heavy duplex reticle

For a long time I have preferred the heavy duplex over the standard, although I have some of both. My primary goal is to set up the rifle for hunting, and am finding that apparently there are few offerings these days, and hard to discover. A few years ago, I got the Leupold custom shop to build me a 2.5-8 with heavy duplex and custom parallax, but I heard more recently that they do much less of that, and at a much higher price. I would consider other brands like the Zeiss I have used for years, but I like the longer eye relief when I can get it.

I much prefer a bold duplex for hunting, but unfortunately the trend is heading the wrong direction, to wide and thin examples.
And in my opinion negating the advantages that made the duplex a great hunting reticle not only in thick cover and low light, but also worked at longer ranges as well.
Now I feel the need to add illumination to the current offerings because they screwed them up so bad.

Look at Tract scopes. They have really clear glass, track well, and the T-plex reticle is thicker but not too thick for precise shooting.

I’ve grown to like the #4 reticles from zeiss and a few others

Big heavy posts with very fine crosshairs.

Not quite a heavy duplex but similar and a little more availableo at

My most used deer rifle had a heavy duplex Leupold. Other than German #4, a true one, those are most of what I have always used. It can be more like aiming with irons at times. People don't like that nowadays.

A Vortex Optics Razor HD LH G4 might be close enough. Or learn to live with illuminated reticles.

The Bushnell Firefly series had a heavy duplex.

The ones we have are actually a tri-plex and we really like them. Have them on two Model 7s, my wife's Abolt Micro, and a CVA muzzle loader; all 2-7x32. Alas,seems everybody thinks they're Spec Ops these days and need reticles that look like a pile of spilled spagetti when they're shooting lots of times at extended bow range.