Stage reshoots, yeeted holsters and a systems punching well above its weight. Lets get into the Stoeger STR-9!
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Stoeger was cool enough to send us a STR-9Rs Combat to try out and this coincided with a PCSL 2-Gun Match at Cameo Shooting and Education Center in Western Colorado. The TLDR is that the STR-9 offers a lot of features for a super accessible price. The trigger is pretty great especially compared to others in its price group. The optics ready version come with 4 plates for various optic footprints in the box, a trick that many other gun makers could learn. Reliability is 100% which is no surprise coming from Stoeger. The stippling and texture could use a lot of work but given that development on this started before even Glock gave up on finger grooves makes this easily forgivable. Recoil impulse lands right in the middle, not sharp by any means but then not as soft as some like the FN 509. Controls do what they are suppose to. I'd love for the mag release to be a little larger, and the slide release needs some work. I found that the slide release was easy to interfere with. Mags drop free easily. Yes you can always spend more for a system with more well rounded features like a Sig Sauer, Glock, Smith & Wesson or H&K, but with the Stoeger you gonna have enough to get a case of ammo and a good holster for the same or even less cash. Some of the STR-9s come with a holster packed in. These are trash. I actually has a stage stopped for safety reasons because the terrible pack in paddle holster started to walk off my belt. Just get a good holster like one from Black Scorpion (no affiliation) and get on with your life.
In closing, the STR-9 is a really good system that offers a lot of bang for the buck. I was able to clean stages with out thinking about the STR-9 much, it ran flawlessly, and can keep up with some of the big names. All we need is some more after market support and a few tweaks to the formula and this could find its way into my ring of all time favorite systems!