That's a beautiful rifle--but "too beautiful to hunt"?
I have hunted a lot with walnut-stocked rifles with far better than average pieces of wood. My experience is that really GOOD walnut (meaning lots of "figure") is far harder than the typical softer walnut found on the relatively inexpensive factory rifles still offered with walnut these days. This hardness (which most hunters have not experienced) makes them harder to damage, and the standard oil-based finish of such stocks also makes them easier to touch up, so they don't show the relatively small dings that appear.
Aside from my personal experience, have been to the O'Connor Hunting Heritage Center in Lewiston, Idaho several times, and not just seen but handled the custom rilfles of Jack and Eleanor O'Connor, all of which were hunted with considerably. Yes, they do have small marks of use (or honor) but not nearly as many as most of today's hunters "imagine." I would guess that part of this is due to another coat or two of oil-based finish, but it is always far less than hunters who've owned mediocre (in both wood and finish) factory walnut stocks can imagine.
