Dear OP...Fireballdave. allow me to hijack your thread by re-titleing the subject to " Why I love rear-cocking airguns", "me" for my opinion. I have "five" PCP's with rear cocking A .25 Bobcat and four Taipans...Two standard and one compact plus one Mutant, all the Taipan's are .22's...Guess you can say I like Taipans...Been shooting 'em a lot, (including the Bobcat) since '18 or '19, so I know a little ( a lot ) about shooting rear side levers.
Two of my Vets were owned by two other respondents to this thread and ALL my Taipans came from members...used...The black stocked Mutant was built around '14...never been opened...no issues with any of them, probably 20 to 25 years of combined usage between the four with no issues...All aforementioned airguns had groups posted on this AGN forum...many times...with the exception of my latest Taipan Veteran "compact"...We'll bring that up to date now, ChickenDumpling you may recognize this compact. These groups were shot yesterday, my third shoot with this compact Vet .22...at 45 paces with JSB 18's running at 830 fps off my knee nonbenched...two 10 shot and one 5 shot with a 4x14 scope...usually use 24 or 40x scope...I expected nothing less as I KNOW what these type 1 Vets are capable of, and the "old Mutant" just may be the best of the bunch. Fireballdave, you would/will be doing yourself a disservice in this hobby sport by discounting rearcocking PCP's considering how good some are...consider the cocking example photo, hold in right hand, cross over with left, nothing to it, Bobcat works the same way...Finally if your commiserating about ergonomics and wasting money if you don't "bond" with rearcocking, Typr 1 Vets resale value is good currently...just sell the thing...But chances are you won't have a problem with it,
whatever gun you choose...IMHO...