I believe both types were installed by Parker Bros. in Meriden, depending on what was ordered and what the stocker had to work with. Certainly this small sampling is inconclusive at best. More often than not however, I believe when a gun was ordered with a recoil pad the stock would have to have been cut to add the pad and still attain the LOP that the gun would have been ordered with, thereby eliminating any relief that would have been cut into the wood to allow for the 'standard for the grade' spurred buttplate. This would not likely have been the case for the higher grades which normally would have had a skeleton steel butt plate as these would have been cut and fitted to meet the requirements of a particular order and the lower grades with spurred "hard rubber" dog's head butt plates would have been produced in runs for inventory.
|