Backcountry Hunting Podcast: Choosing The Best Hunting Rifle Stock (plus chassis vs. stock)

Choosing The Best Hunting Rifle Stock (plus chassis vs. stock)

Jun 16, 2023

Your rifle's stock is your primary contact point with the launch platform that kills your quarry. Choose wisely. Here's how.

Wood & Laminate wood stocks
- Proven, aesthetic, easy to work with & accurize
- Susceptible to changes in moisture
Injection-molded composites
- Cheap plastic
- Better quality "glass-filled nylon"
- Overly flexible
- Hard to glass bed & accurize
- Susceptible to extremes in temperature
High-end carbon-fiber stocks
- Carbon fiber lightest & most rigid
- Easy to glass bed & accurize
- Extremely strong
- Lightest material available
- Impervious to both moisture and temperature shifts
- Expensive
Chassis-type stocks
- Ultimately configurable
- Many can be folded for easy packing
- Heavy, cold to the touch
- Snaggy in brush
- Noisy when bumped
- Best for hunting are new magnesium/carbon fiber
- Keep screws tight
- Expensive