The Hunting Blog -
Synthetic stocks work. The good ones don’t warp or split and take abuse that would turn walnut into weathered driftwood. I’ve used them in swamp and jungle, in places as far apart as New Caledonia, Africa and Argentina, and they performed flawlessly. (Well, almost. The light ones tend to ruin the balance of a rifle, making it muzzle heavy.)
But no matter what you do – camo paint jobs, textured finishes, sleek black – you can’t turn a plastic stock into a family heirloom. There are plenty of fine guns a century old that look great, but nobody even knows yet what an old synthetic might look like. I asked one gunsmith – who spends most of his time restocking mountain rifles in laminate or kevlar – and he told me that in a hundred years the average synthetic is likely to “denature.” I asked what that meant and the answer was even more cryptic. “You never see an antique bow or harp either. Things forced together, glued together, they want to fall apart. Wood doesn’t.” Gunsmiths are a philosophical bunch, must be all that time alone.
In some cases – an upland bird gun for example – synthetics simply look ridiculous. Happily there is still plenty of nice walnut around for those whose tastes run that way. I had a stock made recently for a .375 H&H, not massive recoil but no cream puff either. The blank was cut on New Zealand’s South Island by Brian Kerr (www.nzwalnut.co.nz), a nice guy who has been in the wood game for decades and stands behind his product.
Now here’s something plastic can never do – history. The timber was slabbed from the butt of a century-old English walnut, planted by early pioneers. It was cut in the town of Blenheim in 1997, the blank carefully stored and seasoned for fifteen years. Kevin Gaskill, a world class craftsman, did the stock work. It’s deliberately not in exhibition grade, but strikes a balance between figure and strength. There is no other stock exactly like it anywhere.
I love owning it, and will pass it to my son one day, and perhaps he will do the same. It’s been known to happen. To me walnut is a swirl of autumn leaves, shot through with glimmers of dark nights and good whisky. In old walnut is the steady march of years long gone. No two pieces can ever be the same, and all of them must, by necessity, be hand-carved by craftsmen of some skill.
I get why plastic works…but it would be a poorer world without some rich old walnut to stare into - to wonder at where it came from, and where it might go one day.
Pete Ryan
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