Benelli Lupo Synthetic - Classy and creative

I had seen the Lupo at a few gun shows and only exchanged casual glances with it. However, I decided that I really needed to take a closer look at this newer rifle and see how a brand associated with shotguns fares in the world of rifles. Benelli is owned by Beretta, which provides significant financial support for marketing and advertising products. It is good to see how engineers and marketers collaborate on creating a tool for serious work.

The BEST treatment
The Lupo starts out with a cold hammer-forged barrel that shows a 17mm diameter and a 1:8” twist rate. It is capped with a 14x1 thread for a moderator or brake. The crown is neat, and the finish is an unusually deep and lustrous polished black throughout the rifle. They have used a proprietary finish they call BE.S.T. (Benelli Surface Treatment). It is applied to the barrel, barrel nut, receiver, and bolt handle. The 10-year rifle guarantee is coupled with a 25-year corrosion warranty.

Part chassis
The barrel swells as it enters the receiver, where a nut secures it in place. To appreciate all the details, the rifle must be disassembled. This gun appears to have been designed from scratch and showcases some of the best modern design elements. While these elements may not be entirely unique on their own, they demonstrate a high level of attention to detail that impresses me. Essentially, there is an underside T25 Torx screw ahead of the magazine well, with a second under the bolt, below the scope’s ocular body. Benelli supplies all the tools, and with the two screws out, you can remove the barrelled action from the stock, which is in three pieces. The centre section is an aluminium chassis that the forend bolts to. This chassis is hard-anodised black aluminium and mates precisely with the steel action for zero bedding stress. The buttstock also bolts to the centre chassis. Spacer rings are supplied, and you can alter the cast and drop on the stock to suit the shooter, which is very unusual for a rifle. Even though this design element is very ‘shotgun’, it all locks securely in position, and there is a serious note of no expense spared in what to the casual glance may have just looked like acres of plastic.

Hidden details
There is a hefty recoil lug to transfer all dynamics to the stock, and you can see how the trigger guard is part of the aluminium chassis. Inspection of the trigger unit shows another bespoke detailed design, with precision machined sears on view. All the polymer mouldings are crisp, with no expense spared on tooling.
The Lupo’s bolt has a push-feed face with three lugs for a 60º lift, and there is a right-side extractor claw and sprung ejector. The bolt’s shaft is carefully scalloped and profiled to minimise size and weight while allowing the magazine to fit in the rifle with all five rounds, giving the gun a 5+1 capacity. The unusual bolt handle shows an angular shape with a flattened oval handle. The overall length is 55mm proud of the shaft, which keeps it compact while maintaining an ergonomic shape for fast access, cycling, and adequate leverage to extract fired cases from the chamber.

A little creep
The single-stage trigger sits in a spacious trigger guard that you can fit a gloved finger through, and it broke at 800 grams (28 oz), even though it is advertised as adjustable from 1000 to 2000 grams. There was a tiny amount of creep, but it was predictable enough for a hunting rifle.
The magazine holds 5 rounds in two columns and can be loaded in or out of the gun. It’s fast to reload and a single round dropped into the ejection port will also feed straight to the chamber without any hang-ups.

Bolt shroud
The bolt’s shroud is steel and shows a cocked action indicator peeping out below. It’s silver with a red dot. Benelli has opted for an ambidextrous tang safety, which I like. Move it forward for FIRE and rear for SAFE with bolt lock. There is also a small button by the bolt handle’s base, allowing the shooter to open the bolt while the rifle is on safe. The bolt release catch is on the left-hand side of the receiver and offers smooth operation, with no awkward issues removing or reinstalling the bolt.

Mount up
As well as the Picatinny bases screwed to the receiver, the rifle comes with a Burris Fullfield scope and Signature Zee rings, making this £1700 package very attractive. An additional Stalon moderator was supplied for the test.
Along with the rifle, Benelli supplied a detailed manual, tools, stock spacers, length of pull spacers, and a bottle of oil. A test certificate states the ammunition used to produce a 3-shot, 0.88 MOA group at 100m. Although it’s a common assurance these days, you don’t always get told which ammunition it was done with, although given how many ammunition brands Beretta owns, I was interested to see that they used Hornady for the test, and I have the same ELD-X in stock for my own procedures.

Real-world use
Fitting the scope was straightforward, and all I added was a bipod and the moderator. Given it’s a hunting rifle with a 3-shot guarantee, I stayed with 3-round groups and used a few available ammunition types. See Ammo Table.
There were no surprises, and the rifle easily met the standard advertised. Benelli uses a progressive comfort recoil pad that deforms telescopically in a controlled manner, and six sizes are available to adjust the length of pull. There are also three cheekpiece inserts available to get your ideal fit, but I shot the rifle as supplied. I didn’t adjust the cast and drop on the stock, as this is a very personal factor, and I shoot ambidextrous anyway. I am very used to adapting to whatever rifle is presented to me, yet the Lupo was especially gentle to shoot. The Creedmoor is a pussycat, and in a 4 to 5 kg rifle with a scope and moderator package, it’s even more easygoing. The modularity of the stock will make it suitable for a wide range of shooters who fall outside of the common dimensions experienced from European rifles, although the grip is perhaps a little small for larger hands. The forend is rigid and allows the barrel to maintain its full free float all the way back to the action, even if clamped onto a tripod mount. I liked the finger grooves and chequering, which gave great tactile shape and grip. Even more subtle was the butt’s underside sling anchor point, which is incorporated into the moulding, meaning your supporting hand doesn’t snag on a stud/swivel setup.

Pussycat
Further comfort is available from the soft foam nature of the comb insert, and the stock avoids any annoying hollow resonance if bumped. The Benelli hammer-forged barrels undergo a Cryogenic treatment. While I cannot directly prove its benefits for a hunting rifle using factory ammunition, it significantly preserved group size and point of impact over nine sets of three-shot strings.

Conclusion
Like the Beretta BRX 1, you can see how the Benelli, as a cousin in the family, has similarly adopted a creative design approach to make a characteristically different rifle, and I think they have achieved it. At the end of the day, all rifles must operate as a tool for similarly shaped humans that essentially need the same thing, but it is refreshing to see how the Lupo stands out with easily adapted stock geometry. Conversion is straightforward and covered in detail by the instruction book, as is the length of pull. My only complaint about the rifle is the slim grip and some trigger creep, but I appreciate the magazine system and integral chassis layout. Benelli’s BE.S.T coating on the barrel and action carries a 25-year scratch and rust resistance warranty, and the mechanical warranty of 10 years out of the box on the rifle is an impressive statement.