Shooting the Voluptuous Stoeger Cougar.

If, like me, you have a deep love of all things firearm related, chances are good that you are familiar with the Beretta brand of firearms. If not in person, then at least in reputation. 

This Italian firearms manufacturer was founded in 1526 and has been owned by the same family ever since. Because of this, all of their trade secrets have been passed down through generations and now Beretta is considered as one of the world’s foremost firearm manufacturers in the world.

In 1994 our much loved Beretta released the Beretta Cougar 8000 as a more compact alternative to the well-known full-sized Beretta 92 service pistol. The pistol was intended to offer a compromise between concealability, ease of carry, accuracy and firepower (and in reality did an excellent job of it!), but the timing was all wrong and the pistol never became very popular outside of service use due to the release of Beretta’s new plastic “wondergun” – the PX4, shortly after.

Apart from having the spotlight stolen by the Beretta PX4, the Beretta Cougar’s rotating barrel with stationary central block was misunderstood and people shied away from the pistol because it was “different”. In reality it was an excellent design and worked very well to reduce recoil, but the pistol was never really given a chance to prove itself. Some people also found the overall look of the Beretta Cougar to be lacking with its sharp edges and square dust cover. In the end production of the Beretta Cougar was ceased and the PX4 came into the limelight.

However, somewhere along the way, Beretta gave the tooling and equipment necessary to manufacture the venerable Cougar pistol to Stoeger. They moved the whole operation over to Turkey and now Stoeger is the main brand on the Cougar model, using Beretta’s design and tooling for the gun.

If you are familiar with Berretta’s handguns, you will immediately notice that the Stoeger Cougar very closely resembles the 92FS/M9. The trigger guard, sights, magazine release and even the sweep-up safety mechanism are all identical. The slide release is identical, and so is the take-down mechanism in function and design. So, with that heritage in mind, the Stoeger Cougar  should prove to be a very reliable gun.

In all honesty the Stoeger Cougar is nothing much to look at. This pistol has inherited the big-boned look from the Beretta 92 and is definitely not the prettiest girl at the party. But this fact is easily overlooked when you start putting a few rounds downrange and I found that this pistol quickly grows on you.

I had a little help with this review from one of our clients who is the proud new owner of one of these plump little pistols. He is a brand new shooter and I thought that it would be good to see how this pistol fares in the hands of a new shooter as well as someone who has been shooting for a while. The results surprised me and I have to admit that this stout little pistol performed much better than I had anticipated.

Firstly, as I have already mentioned, this pistol doesn’t have much in the way of looks. The “Read manual before use” and “Warning: Retract slide to see if loaded. Fires without magazine.” stamped into the right side of the frame and “Made in Turkey Imported by Stoeger Industries. Inc. Ackk. MD USA” on the other side does not help much in this department either. The grip on the Cougar is extremely comfortable and I found it very easy to get and keep a good grip while shooting, although I found that my first few shots were a little bit low and I had to adjust my grip to find happiness. The controls are straightforward and very easy to reach and operate safely.

The sights are very straightforward (three white painted dots) and did not provide much of a challenge to master. A minor flaw, however on both the pistol that I test fired, as well as the one that I photographed, is that the white painted dots on the rear sight are not the same size and I found that it threw me off a little when aiming. This is something that you can easily fix at home, but I still felt that it should not be an issue on a brand new gun.

The recoil on this pistol was extremely easy to manage and I was very surprised at how little recoil I actually experienced. The Cougar has a rotary barrel locking system, thus barrel rotates instead of lifts like most other pistols and this keeps the barrel in line with the sight picture at all times and also (theoretically) results in a reduction in felt recoil and muzzle flip. I don’t know if it is the rotary barrel, the grip or the weight of this little pistol, but I did experience very little recoil when shooting with this pistol. The trigger pull was quite heavy when firing double action, but no more than anticipated. It is nice and smooth all the way through on single action though and has a very noticeable reset.

I managed to put my first ten rounds comfortably inside the 0-down zone of a SADPA target at 9,1 meters (10Yards), although I had to aim slightly higher after I found that my initial few shots were slightly lower than I liked. All in all I loved shooting with this voluptuous little lady and found that she performed extremely well in all departments except looks and even that grew on my by the end of the day.

When changing magazines I found that the magazine well on the Cougar has extremely sharp edges and would need some attention with a file to make it a little smoother. Again not something major, but I would have liked a little more attention to detail from Stoeger in this regard.

Our excited Stoeger owner had a great time transforming ammunition into noise on the range and even though he is a brand new shooter, he still managed to put most of his shots inside the 0-down zone or just below on the SADPA target that we used for testing.

Overall I think that this is an awesome little pistol that offers a lot of bang for your buck. It is a little heavy for use as a competitive sport gun, but the Cougar will make an excellent personal defense gun, delivering no-nonsense, rugged performance that you can rely on when it matters most. The Cougar pistols are very reasonably priced and at just R6 600, the Stoeger Cougar is an excellent choice for self-defense and occasional sporting alike.