Cocking levers - why I like Mauser's

With the Mauser M03 the firing spring is cocked by pushing the lever at the rear of the bolt across to the right, to the Fire position. The soft, flat bottom of the thumb does the pushing. It also brakes the return of the lever when the action is being de-cocked. There's some effort involved but it's not uncomfortable because of the way the thumb is being used. The pictures and video snippet below show what I mean.

With the Blaser R8 and Merkel RX Helix, cocking requires the thumb to push a slide forwards and up the rear of the pistol grip. Again, there's a good amount of spring tension to overcome, but with these rifles it's where the tip of the thumb meets the fingernail that does the pushing, as per the picture below.

Whenever I go on hunting trips my fingers take a beating. I get splits in the skin at the tips of my thumbs, from the cold and the wet, from undoing and re-doing knots, tightening ropes, putting up tents and tarps - whatever. It'll happen in one day if I'm getting lots done. These splits are nasty and get worse if the skin keeps getting pulled on. They take a good while to heal and longer if I'm not careful.

Cocking an R8 or RX Helix puts exactly the kind of stress on the tip of my thumb that will be a problem if it's split. I noticed this the first time I pushed on those slides to cock and un-cocked them - a little warning bell went off.

Now I know, a good solution would be for me to drink a cup of concrete and toughen up a bit. Fair enough. If I had my heart set on buying a Blaser R8 or a Merkel RX Helix, I'd get around this problem one way or another. But as things stand, the Mauser M03's cocking lever is nice to my thumb and I'm happy about that. Works for me.

My video below provides another view of how the flat bottom of the thumb takes the load when cocking a Mauser M03.