The green mountain laminate stock doesn't look good in pictures but is okay in person, I have two of them. The brake is replaceable by a "barrel weight" or some such that doesn't change POI or a thread protector so you can remove the thing entirely. it does look like a big schnoz on an otherwise pretty girl, but it will negate recoil quite a bit in some of the boomers this thing is chambered for. Without the brake the rifle looks pretty neat IMO with the iron sights and barrel band swivel stud.

I like that they gave it at least a 20" barrel. Enough so it isn't a total concussive blaster but still pretty handy. Well, okay, with the brake it'll be loud. But Ruger has a habit of putting too short barrels on otherwise useful rifles.

I can see they're going for the handy hard whacking Thumper, but the calibers are sort of wrong for a thumper. Yeah, yeah, I know, a 20" barrel .300 Win Mag is okay. Someone else can shoot that one, thank you. A .375 Ruger I can see, but the others not so much. A .350 Rem. Mag (aka .35 Whelen short)seems about right, but that chambering is pretty dead. The 9.3 BS seems like a perfect fit here as well. Maybe John and Charlie can pester the factories to legitimize that one. smile

The contour of the butt stock is less than graceful, again like a cute chick with a nice upper half and a fat butt. But the recoil pad has gotta beat the recycled tank treads Ruger has used as recoil pads and the adjustable LOP is certainly nice if a standard LOP doesn't suit one. Or you can change LOP for summer/winter use when your clothes change.

Functional it is. Pretty it ain't. But if you don't like it, take off the brake and put it in a factory laminate stock or even a walnut stock. Then you have a 20" barreled rifle that looks like this, which is a really neat looking rifle:

[Linked Image]

Gunnery, gunnery, gunnery.
Hit the target, all else is twaddle!