Thanks Semisane and all the other posters who had nice things to say about my stock. It definitally is a departure from the Hawken style, but, who knows, maybe the brothers would have liked it if they had thought of doing it that way. And, for sure, if it was an original Hawkens, I never would have committed a sacrilege like that.
I recently put a commercial thumbhole on my Dad's Rem 725, 30-06. Never before have I shot that gun so comfortably or so accurately. I figured if it could do that for a CF, it couldn't be bad for a ML.
I've still been having some accuracy problems, so I've followed Semisane's progress with his Virgin Sister. I took the rear sight off the old barrel & ground the bottom to fit the tang of the new gun & filed the slant off the back of the notched sight. To that I soldered a brass disc I made from the ear off an eared brass pipe elbow. The whole works was screwed to the tang so it lined up with the original GM rear sight. After removing the GM rear sight, I had a real nice peep. I'm still waiting for the 7/32"x40 tap I need so I can install a proper aperture. In the meantime, the 3/16 hole gives me a ghost sight that allowed me to shoot 4" groups with 60 gr T7 & 250 gr SSTs at 50 yards. That'll be good enough for deer next week & when I finish the sight & have more time, I'll work at finding the sweet spot on the powder measure for that gun and see what it'll really do.