I have a handful of G3-style rifles. I got them because I wanted a proven .308 platform and because, at the time, magazines were less than $1.00 each. However, the G3 platform is a mixed bag. It has two tremendous advantages in its favor: brute ruggedness and no gas system to screw with. After that it has a couple disadvantages…one of the biggest is that the design of the gun makes mounting an optic very difficult. The problem isn’t as easy as simply slapping some pic rail on top of the receiver. No, see the problem is that the stock that is used has a length of pull that is a bit longer than it needs to be, and there’s a bit of a dogleg drop to the stock to bring your eyes into line with the iron sights atop the rifle. If you mount an optic, you have to literally give up your cheek weld to get your face high enough to see through the scope.

Gun Jesus, a long time hater of the G3 platform, made a video about a ‘modernization’ project he did to a G3-clone. Among other things, he made it left-handed-friendly, added an extended safety, changed the cocking handle out, got a trigger job, and most importantly swapped the stock for one made by the Swede firm of Spuhr.

I’d been wanting to add an optic to my pet PTR-GI rifle but did not want to have to go through the awkwardness of a bizarre cheek riser kludge. Gun Jesus’ experiments, and successful experiences, with modifying his gun prompted me to go ahead and drop a rather healthy chunk of change on what is essentially an M4 stock for the G3.

I ordered the stock from Mile High Shooting and, yes, it really did cost that much. Got the stock in about a week. It would have been nice to have an instructional video on the stock changeout, but the one-page printed instructions were adequate. There is virtually no way you are going to use iron sights on the rifle with this thing in place…you simply cannot get your face low enough to get a sight picture. But….your face sits perfectly where it needs to be to look through a LPVO or dot optic. Since I had a couple extra Leupold Patrol scopes and mounts sitting here, thats what I went with.

Loaded up some 150 gr. softpoints and went to the range. Recoil mitigation? Oh yes….the recoil is nowhere near what it normally is with the issue stock. The stock puts my face in the perfect position to acquire the scope quickly. First round off the magazine tended to print about an inch away from the others, but if you discount that it was turning in 1.5″ groups at 100 yards. Getting a trigger job probably would make a big difference. However, for going out and dropping the hammer on Bambi this thing should be just fine.

If you have a G3 pattern rifle, and you want to make it a bit more native to optics, this stock (if you can stomach the expense) is everything youre looking for. And since TPIWWP, here you go:

By the by, if I had to do it all over again I probably would just go with an AR-10 for the superior ergonomics. Magazines would have been several orders of magnitude more expensive, but I think that might have been a worthwhile tradeoff. One of the reasons I didn’t go with the AR-10 originally is because, at that time, there was no ‘standardized’ magazine…some outfits used modified FAL mags, some used modified M14 mags, some used proprietary mags, etc, etc. Nowadays it looks like thats all shaken out.