I'm not sure I will able to answer your question directly, but I may be able to provide some additional info for you to consider before making a decision. I also have never used a Horus or similar reticle, but I do have a Leupold Mark 4 8-25x with the TMR reticle, which is fairly busy. I just recently bought a VX3 8-25x with the Target Dot reticle. I mounted it to the same gun which housed the Mark 4 and I was pleasantly surprised at how much more enjoyable of a reticle it was to shoot as it provided a full, uninterrupted picture. I found that I really don't use hash marks for hold off, instead I just make adjustments on the scope; but most of my shooting is done at the range. What I do really like about the TMR/Horus type reticles however, is the ability to make accurate follow-up shot adjustments. In order to take FULL advantage of the reticle it is important to have the reticle and adjustment dials in the same format, i.e. mil/mil or moa/moa. This allows you to measure your miss with the reticle and then input that same measurement to your dials, this takes out a lot of guess work! For example if your scope reticle says you hit 0.5 mils to the right, you can just add adjust that dial 0.5 mils to the left to get on target. I used to have a Mark 4 with moa dials and mil-dot reticle; this created a lot of confusion and resulted in a quick sale. There is a great video put out by Magpul entitled "Art of the Precision Rifle" in which they cover most of the popular reticles on the market including the Horus reticle. The video also shows a number of views of the Horus reticle on targets at varying ranges. Youtube may have some clips. If the Horus reticle is too much for your needs, something like the TMR or Mil-Dot provides a nice compromise between the standard duplex reticle and something like the Horus type. Anyways, hope this gives you something to think about.
