My Whelen is a walnut stocked Ruger Hawkeye. It had the same hard thin rubber recoil pad as my Hawkeye Roberts' and recoil was sharp with 225gn loads. I do like Rugers but I wonder if anyone there fires their own guns? I replaced the stock with a HS Precision with a nice thick one inch pad. Much better. The .35 Whelen may not be that big a boomer but the recoil was enough to start splitting the stock behind the tang.
