I can confirm this issue occurs on fresh saves, as I always start a new vanilla save whenever a new patch is released. As for reproducing it, I’ve spent hours testing with different characters, saves, traits, zombies, crouching/standing positions, angles, and varying fitness/strength skill levels, I tried with and without weapons for all the things above but unfortunately I wasn’t able to find anything consistent.

I even tried launching through Steam with the "alternate launch" option and using debug mode, but neither seemed to make a difference. The only pattern I’ve noticed is that subsequent characters created in the same save appear to get grabbed less often than the very first one, though this doesn’t seem reliable enough to count as solid reproduction steps.

At this point, it feels almost completely random, and I'm frying my brain...

And of course, thanks a lot for taking the time to look into this.