Straight-Pull? Which is the best?

None.

Straight pull is theoretically better but the problem is nothing is standard and most aren't built for true precision.

You are essentially an early adopter with any of them but Blazer and they are purely hunting based.

Blaser manufactures one of the most accurate sniper/target rifles ever made and it is straight pull.
Blaser R93 UIT Switch Barrel

Shooting at pennies at 100yds If you look closely on shot number 4, you can see the penny actually move as the bullet hits it tangentially.

The Blaser R93 is a straight-pull action precision rifle offered in a multitude of calibers and barrel lengths manufactured by the German firearms manufacturer Blaser. Designed by Blasers' designer Mr. Meinhard Zeh in 1993, it had a number of features rare on modern hunting rifles, including a manual cocking system and a proprietary Blaser saddle scope mount[ for mounting the optic directly to the quick-change barrel.


The Blaser R93 is a truly modular system built around an aluminum alloy frame, offering differing stocks and barrels varying length and thickness available in chamberings from .22 LR to .375 H&H Magnum/.416 Remington Magnum/.458 Winchester Magnum size.
The barrel has a quick-change design which lets the user switch barrels using two screws and a hex key. Different bolt heads for different groups of calibers and magazine inserts are also user changeable, making the Blaser R93 a modular firearm capable of using a multitude of calibers in its chassis.
The rifle has a shorter overall length compared to more traditional designs due to the trigger being placed under the magazine. The rifle also has a reputation for being easy to disassemble and reassemble which can be an advantage when doing maintenance or during travelling, and has a reputation for having a repeatable zero upon reassembly. The Blaser R93 Tactical is a German bolt action sniper rifle, based on the Blaser R93 design. It has as variants the Blaser LRS 2 and Tactical 2. It is used by German and Dutch police forces as well as the Australian military and special police units. The rifles were manufactured by the German firearms manufacturer Blaser.

Blaser had to redesign that piece of shit after turning a dude into a unicorn after a high pressure event. There is a reason they were never adopted widespread despite the amazing accuracy and quality of guns like the k31. Hipster shit.

Con:

If the Beretta has any issues, and you have to return it for a warranty repair, you will potentially experience the world champs at terrible customer service. A literal F rating with the BBB. They stole a rifle from me years ago, and refuse to return it. It blew up in my hands, they told me to send it in, I did, then they refused to speak to me. To this day I have never received any emails or calls from Beretta USA, despite sending them dozens of emails and making hundreds of calls. There is nothing that can be done about it either. If you read the BBB ratings, you'll find that I'm not the only one.

So, put that on your scale.

DeathBeforeDismount said:

Blaser had to redesign that piece of shit after turning a dude into a unicorn after a high pressure event. There is a reason they were never adopted widespread despite the amazing accuracy and quality of guns like the k31. Hipster shit.

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The R93 was a great design on paper and it worked well with standard cartridges.
But when they started pushing up to the Super Magnum class such as the .338LM (which I think actually are the only ones that had the accidents, but I could be wrong), the tolerance stacking and safety margins just weren't quite up to edge cases.

Hence they came out with the R8 which while similar has a very different locking ring design that has a lot more safety redundancy built into it.
They also started putting blowout holes on the barrels.

They are an excellent hunting rifle, for the very rich (the top end stocks alone can be over $10,000) especially if you are in an area where having multiple rifles isn't easy, but you could have plenty of barrels and bolt heads.
(The barrels cost as much as a whole nice Tikka rifle).

Their primary purpose in life is driven hunts for boar where you have to get several shots off really quick at a running group of animal(s).

That being said, for most stuff like target shooting or the various gamer shooting sports popular in the USA, you'd actually probably be at a slight disadvantage using them as opposed to a more traditional setup.

The Blaser R8 system is pretty nifty in that you essentially have a complete modular building blocks type rifle you can customize endlessly.
But it's expensive, it's basically a rich man's hunting rifle.

It has some nice safety features like being able to simply pop the entire fire control system out and stick it in your pocket, or a very nice cock/decock option and such.

I have the "working guide" class of the R8 rifle and it's a nice rifle for hunting, but I probably won't use it outside hunting or bush carry.

Poser rifles for wanna be rich. If you can afford a 10k plus hunting gun, it should be a nice double rifle, not some strait pull overpriced abortion. The value is not there in blaser rifles.

Hecouldgoalltheway said:

Con:

If the Beretta has any issues, and you have to return it for a warranty repair, you will potentially experience the world champs at terrible customer service. A literal F rating with the BBB. They stole a rifle from me years ago, and refuse to return it. It blew up in my hands, they told me to send it in, I did, then they refused to speak to me. To this day I have never received any emails or calls from Beretta USA, despite sending them dozens of emails and making hundreds of calls. There is nothing that can be done about it either. If you read the BBB ratings, you'll find that I'm not the only one.

So, put that on your scale.

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Yep, it's sad but after one experience with Beretta trying to warranty a s20 it would be hard to get me to touch another product that they are the service vendor for.

It took me months to get them to respond to phone calls or their online service ticket system. When they did, they tried to have me send the gun to the wrong service center (Beretta uses various sites/gunsmiths for different issues, but all accuracy/feeding problems are supposed to go to them. They tried to get me to send it to a shotgun service center. When I corrected them on that, it took another couple weeks for them to get me the right send in info. When I sent it in (for accuracy and feeding issues, the feeding issues are well documented with the s20 due to bad mags), they simply returned it saying it met their accuracy standards and said they could not replicate the feeding issue. There have been lots of folks posting that the brittle plastic they use for the stock skins is starting to crack now that they've been out for a few years, sounds like Beretta isn't helping them either, basically just blaming them for over tightening screws etc.

So later I called them about the feeding problem again, the CS rep admitted they knew there was a problem with defective mags, but they had no directive to replace them, but they had the new version mags in their online store and gave me a coupon for free shipping to buy them at full retail from their store. I thanked them for their time and information I would forward to our state attorney general at which point they magically found a directive to replace 2 mags.

To summarize.....shame on any company for using them as a service option.

DeadNutz said:

So straight-pulls are gaining momentum in the U.S... Blaser, Strasser, Beretta and now Savage!
Here's where I need help with the pros/cons if you have experience with them.
Blaser and Strasser are starting out around $4500, but have the backbone of German engineering that you just can't beat.

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Strasser is from Austria so Austrian engineering! Are you planning to use it only for hunting? Do you need a takedown for easy traveling? Then maybe RS14. If you want to do more and have compatibility with most Rem700 stocks, magazines and triggers then I think the RS700. RS14 has a safety that locks the firing pin and the bolt, the RS700 just has a trigger safety and doesn't have a bolt lock. The US sales office is a bit weird to deal with and if you look at there past posts you can tell they don't have a clue but the rifle itself is great.

I went Strasser RS700.

How hard is it to rechamber a RS700 ? Do they use barrel nuts or some kind of proprietary attachment ?

I dont know if steel action rifles are available in the us.

They are not as "proprietary" as many of the other European straight pull rifles. Not as much BS.

Picatinny mount in the action, barrel threaded in the action as common bolt actions, so a rebarrel shouldnt be too expensive.
10 rd double stack magazines available.

Chassis available

Disclaimer, I havent shot one.


A thing to note on the Blasers, they use a proprietary mount that is (fucking!) expensive.

They are quite common here, as much as i dislike them, i have yet to see, or even hear about, one that doesn't shoot. And they do make for a handy hunting rifle. You gain a good 2" barrel compared to a similar normal action.

From what i know they can be a bit iffy to reload for, as the run thight chambers, many shooters here use small base dies for them.

Steel Action is by far the best straight pull rifle on the market for "our" use.
The SA, as Tralle explained, use traditional threaded barrels an have picrail milled directly in the receiver.
In the Acila chassis the SA use AI AW mags.