Feature rich for little cash - ProMag Archangel 1500 Precision Stock for the Weatherby Vanguard/Howa 1500 w/10-Round .308 Win/7.62 NATO Magazine

I put this on a Weatherby Vanguard (Obsidian) chambered .308 Winchester. This is my budget minded first hunting rifle. I was looking to add some modern sport rifle features without cloning my AR15 or otherwise abandoning a conventional bolt action silhouette altogether. The aesthetics and features of the Archangel stock combined with its price point seemed a good fit. Installation of the stock could not be easier, two screws. The stock was straight and true, the barrel laid right down floating centered with no adjustments required. The synthetic material of the Archangel stock is quite robust, solid, and HEAVY at 4.8 lbs. reading product specs on its weight didn’t prepare me for actual handling of the stock, this girl is Thicc. There’s substantial mass but it is also carved out in all the right ways. It feels very natural in hand, the pistol grip fills the palm ideally, the forend gives plenty to hold onto and a lot of heat insulation under the barrel. I love the off-hand hook… it’s just made with pleasing ergonomics. It makes shooting the gun feel naturally fun. Really awesome mass for recoil mitigation when range shooting, might be a bit too much if you need to trek around a ways with this gun. Between this stock, a compact scope and a brake, my gun bloated over 12 pounds before dessert. Qd sling mounts were a must for me, this stock has ambi options on the butt end, and the forward QD is 6 o’clock/bottom mounted like traditional rifle slings. I like the tool-less anytime adjustment capability provided by the wheel knobs for the LOP and cheek rise. The mechanism is a little stiff/resistant, it makes it so it isn’t going to be losing your set positions with unintentional movement or through recoil etc. the pistol grip has a storage door, I keep a spare battery and the Allen wrenches for the optics inside. So the WEIRD part of the marketing for this stock is the mysterious integrated bipod. They designed it, built it and list it as a feature but for some reason nobody provided photos of the device deployed and in use. It’s like they don’t really want you to know about it, I had no idea what to expect before the stock was delivered. I wish I could add a photo here for clarity. It is adequate, you can certainly use it at the range for getting your optics set up and getting acquainted with your gun. It is good enough until you can get the money for a real bipod if you like to actually use bipods with regularity. I would not rely on this for an actual hunt at all or for extensive/ intense range shooting. It’s mostly aluminum but it’s overall small scale, basic and non adjustable. It’s a lovely design in that it completely disappears into the stock when not in use eliminating multiple snag and damage points, but it’s certainly a limited capability device, the deployment button can be hard to manipulate as well. I like it well enough for backyard sighting in and plinking and I use it for “display” of the gun. It isn’t glorious but it don’t think it’s something so shameful they had to obscure it from the product information either. I really like this stock top to bottom on the whole but there was one frustrating thing out of the box at the start: the magazine. First use it did not seem to push the bullets high enough for the bolt to catch/push them into the chamber even though the magazine had “clicked” like it was fully inserted and locked. I then noted that the mag needed forward upward pressure to get completely properly aligned and feed the ammo correctly … after intentionally adjusting the cant of the mag forward with hand pressure for several insertions and a couple groups it seemed that things kind of broke in and worked out. The mag got easier and easier to insert and was then self seating to the correct angle, holding and it just…. worked and didn’t look back. I don’t know if it was a materials breaking in thing, a user learning curve thing or a combination, but in a day it was resolved without tools, screaming or injury. I do like the position and function of the mag release lever, easy to operate. Again, all in all I am very happy with what I got for the money.