Best Ruger 10/22 Stock Upgrades on the Market

The Ruger 10/22 is arguably the most prolific and best-known rimfire rifle in the world. the 10/22 has been manufactured continuously since 1964, and well over 7 million have been made. Because it fires the .22 LR round, it is a great introductory weapon for new shooters and fun for any shooter, and relatively inexpensive to shoot—not as inexpensive as it used to be, but still far cheaper than a centerfire rifle.

The 10/22 has been around for well over half a century. There are an incredible range of aftermarket accessories and Ruger 10/22 upgrades means that you can customize your rifle to suit your shooting style, needs, and personality. (The Ruger is also inexpensive enough that if you want two or three versions, that’s achievable, too!) The quickest way to change the look and functionality of your weapon is with a new stock, so your first customization step should be to find one of the Best 10/22 Stock Upgrades for what you want to achieve.

Our Guide to the Top 8 Best 10/22 Stock Upgrades

The most popular option for 10/22 stock upgrades is the tactical style, and there is no shortage of contenders for best Ruger 10/22 replacement stocks in that regard. There are plenty of other choices, though, from sci-fi ergonomic to World War II replica. We’ll guide you through the list of the top eight picks and then zero in on what we rate as the best overall choice.

Why a Ruger 10/22?

The attraction of the Ruger 10/22 is clear: The .22 LR round is widely available, relatively inexpensive, and highly versatile. It can be used for small game hunting, plinking, training (especially for new shooters), and nuisance varmint control. (It would also be a great choice for the zombie apocalypse. All we can think when we watch zombie movies or TV shows and see those huge herds of undead menacing the living is, “Oh, just give me a 10/22, a couple of bricks of .22 LR, and a tree.”)

The 10/22 is a premiere example of a mass-market but quality semi-automatic .22 rifle made by a respected manufacturer. In addition to its reasonable price, it features a two-screw, V-block system to mate the barrel and receiver as well as overall simple construction. That means it can easily be customized—including barrel replacement, which is no easy task on a typical rifle—by non-gunsmiths.

The OEM magazine is a 10-round rotary magazine (patented by Ruger), but 15- and 25-round box magazines are available and highly popular these days.

Reasonably priced, reliable, accurate, easy to customize with plenty of available accessories and aftermarket parts, plus cheap to shoot…what’s not to love?

Picking the Right Stock for Your Shooting Application

The 10/22 is a great utility weapon that can serve a variety of purposes. From hunting and varmint control to training to just shooting for fun, the 10/22 has you covered. Frankly, just about any stock would do for any of these purposes.

Certain stocks are better suited for particular applications

The point of customization is to reflect your personality. If you think folding stocks are just the coolest, then go find the best folding stock for a Ruger 10/22 and do your happy dance.

In short, we can’t tell you the right stock for your personality. That part is strictly up to you. However, there are some criteria you can use to guide your choice:

• Environmental conditions
• Accuracy
• Multiple shooters

What conditions will the rifle be exposed to?

A weapon that will mostly be displayed above the fireplace or in a gun cabinet and handled lovingly when fired will do well with a high-quality, finely finished solid wood stock. A rifle intended for small game hunting needs to be resilient but also quiet, which is where a rubber overcoating comes in handy.

How important is accuracy?

If you are training for competitive shooting or use of a centerfire caliber during hunting season or just take pride in bragging rights, a stock with length of pull and cheek rise adjustments is what you need.

Will multiple shooters be using the same weapon? If this is a family weapon, both adults and children, men and women, right-handers and left-handers may be firing it. Will the stock accommodate all of them easily? Does it need to be adjustable?

These are some examples of questions that will help you match stock style and features to the expected function.

Styles of Ruger 10/22 Stocks

One reason that a 10/22 stock upgrade can so radically change the look of the weapon is that there are 6 different styles available, and style is just a starting point. (We’ll talk about the other aspects in the following section.)

The six most common styles are:

• Classic
• Match
• Tactical
• Folding
• Bullpup
• Thumbhole

Classic

Don’t look down on the classic style as being your father’s or grandfather’s stock. There’s a reason the classic stock design has survived without significant changes for literally hundreds of years: it works! The classic style is ambidextrous and works with a variety of shooter shapes and sizes. They are typically the least expensive. The downside is that there is little ability to adjust the length of pull or cheek rise to precise individual specifications or to add accessories beyond the basic sling and perhaps a bipod.

Match

The match stock is the classic stock tricked out for competitive precision. The most common style is the gooseneck, in which there is increased separation between the grip and the buttstock, enabling the shooter to wrap the hand more fully and at a more nearly vertical angle (typically about 60 degrees to the bore axis), decreasing wrist fatigue. Likewise, match stocks allow adjustment of length of pull and cheek rise (of a distinct cheek rest, often not found on classic stocks), either on the fly or through the installation of one or more spacers between the buttstock and the recoil pad.

Tactical

The most popular style these days, tactical stocks often echo the appearance of either the AR-15 or AK-47 family of rifles. They feature a pistol grip and in many cases have (or allow the addition of) rail systems on the foregrip and/or top of the weapon to enable the mounting of optics, flashlights, lasers, bipods, and a variety of other accessories. There are so many varieties of tactical stocks that we would be hard-pressed to even scratch the surface of what’s available.

Folding

The folding stock is a variation on the tactical stock. While many tactical stocks offer a collapsible buttstock, a folding buttstock can be pivoted out of the way, normally toward the shooter’s non-firing hand. (That is, on a right-handed weapon, the stock will fold to the left.)

Bullpup

The bullpup stock design shifts the grip and trigger well much farther forward on the weapon, in front of the receiver, putting the magazine behind the firing hand. The main effect of the bullpup stock is to reduce the overall length of the weapon, and in fact some 10/22 bullpup stocks require a minimum barrel length to ensure the weapon remains at least 26″ long, which is the federal legal definition of a rifle. The bullpup design is more common among European military and police than in the U.S. It is an optimum design for close-quarters combat, which is obviously not a frequent use of the 10/22.

Thumbhole

This variation on the classic and match stocks essentially cuts a large hole in the buttstock behind the grip, allowing the firing hand to be positioned in its natural position. The thumbhole stock provides a pistol grip hand position while retaining the overall classic stock design. Many thumbhole stocks are not ambidextrous, however.

How to Pick the Best Ruger 10/22 Stock

There are so many 10/22 stock upgrades out there because so many people had a great (or good, or so-so) idea about what factors would make the “ideal” stock. As with most things in life, there are often tradeoffs, so picking the best Ruger 10/22 stock for you means understanding how the various factors interact and what is most important to you.

Durability & Weight

Materials chosen for stocks are generally durable, but some are more rugged than others. Wood is fairly resilient, but if appearance matters to you, wood finishes are subject to scratching and marring. The outer surfaces of wood stocks are finished and resist moisture, often the interior is not, so over time warping can occur.

Polymer stocks are the most resistant to environmental conditions, therefore the least likely to affect weapon accuracy or function. Because they are molded in their final color rather than finished, they are much less subject to marring. Polymers also tend to be lighter than wood while retaining comparable or even greater strength.

Materials

The original factory stock for the 10/22 was solid wood, but over the years various composite options have been offered by Ruger. As for aftermarket stocks, well, if it made sense to make a stock from it, somebody probably has by now. Common materials include

• Solid wood
• Laminated wood
• Polymer
• Fiberglass
• Carbon fiber
• Metal

Solid wood is a classic, but it’s also relatively expensive. Poor-quality wood can warp over time, degrading the rifle’s accuracy. Still, high-quality stocks will use solid walnut or similar woods. Wood accepts beautiful finishes and has a timeless quality to it.

Laminated wood is a more common option these days for wood stocks, and while it might seem like a step down from solid wood, it can show very attractive grain patterns and take a variety of finishes. Wood alone (whether solid or laminated) can suffer metal-to-wood fitting problems and degradation of accuracy over time, so other materials (usually metal) are often integrated to mitigate these issues.

Polymer is by far the most common material for aftermarket stocks, usually reinforced with fiberglass and in some cases integrated with carbon fiber. Yes, polymer is a fancy word for “plastic,” and some people take that to mean lower quality, but a good polymer has plenty of positive qualities. Polymers are unaffected by temperature, moisture and humidity, and corrosion, and they tend to be much more damage-resistant than wood. They are also lighter than other materials.

All-metal stocks (which typically means aluminum) are rare even on military weapons, because there’s just no reason for the extra weight and expense. However, metal is often integrated to some extent into stocks made from other materials. For example, we saw that the Tactical Solutions thumbhole stock uses metal reinforcement in the barrel bed, and aluminum is a common choice for handguards when a rail system is added.

Specific Features

Many of your stock’s features will be driven by the style you choose. That said, there are still some options that you should look for if they matter to you, including

• Sling attachments,
• LOP/cheek rise adjustments,
• Sight/optic compatibility, and
• Rail systems.

Sling swivel studs

Most stocks include these, but some do not. Make sure that what is on the stock is compatible with the type of sling you plan to use. (Many tactical slings, for example, work best with footman’s loops.) Sling points may or may not be quick-detach.

Length of pull and cheek rise adjustments:

Not all stocks feature these adjustments, and for those that do, some are adjustable on the fly while others require the installation or removal of spacers (particularly for LOP).

Sight/optic compatibility:

Some stocks are not compatible with open sights, especially not the 10/22’s OEM sights. Some that work with optics may require higher scope rings. We reviewed the Best Scopes for Your Ruger 10/22 for you.

Rail systems:

Some tactical stocks include a partial or full rail system, and some do not but permit the installation of rails. If a rail system matters to you, make sure you can add one.

Do I Need a Butt Pad on a Ruger 10/22?

As you may have gathered from our comments in the product reviews, we find the idea of a butt pad on a Ruger 10/22 a little amusing. A factory-spec 10/22 weighs about five pounds, and the .22 LR round produces so little recoil that it will barely move a weapon of that weight.

While some upgrade stocks are certainly a bit lighter than the OEM version, nothing is going to make the rifle so light that recoil will become an issue.

About the only legitimate purpose that a butt pad will serve on a 10/22 is to make the butt non-slip, and it doesn’t need to be very thick to accomplish that. If a 10/22 upgrade stock that you like comes with a butt pad, fine, but don’t pay money to add one to your rifle.

How to Install a Ruger 10/22 Stock

The exact installation of an aftermarket 10/22 stock will vary somewhat depending on the model of the stock. However, the basic procedure is very similar for any “drop-in” installation stock. Remember, one of the strengths of the Ruger 10/22 is the ease with which it can be customized.

Although we mentioned this in some of the reviews, we need to repeat here that it’s very important to ensure your rifle (or what you want your rifle to end up) is compatible with the stock you choose. Most will fit a variety of barrel types, for example, but you should verify that your chosen stock will mate with your barrel. The same gos for custom sights or triggers.

1. Clear the weapon. This should be common sense, but we’ll reinforce it here.
2. Loosen the screw on the barrel band until the band can slide off. (Be careful not to damage the finish on the barrel.)
3. Loosen the takedown screw, found just forward of the magazine well.
4. Separate the receiver and barrel from the existing stock.
5. Depending on the type of barrel installation you are using, you may need to insert a barrel tensioner into the foregrip.
6. Insert the receiver and barrel assembly into the stock.
7. Replace the takedown screw (which may be the original or one provided with the stock).

The process seems fairly straightforward, and it generally is, but you may occasionally find that “Insert the receiver and barrel assembly into the stock” takes a little more effort than those instructions imply. Scrap polymer left over from the molding process might need to be removed. Additionally, the interior of the stock may need to be sanded or filed to permit the assembly to seat properly.

And the Winner Is…

Having evaluated eight contenders for best Ruger 10/22 stock upgrade, and bearing in mind that 10 different 10/22 owners may have ten different sets of criteria for their “perfect” stock, it’s time for us to put up or shut up and recommend our choice.

Our pick is the Promag Archangel Precision Stock for Ruger 10/22.

While not a true tactical stock, the Archangel’s gooseneck grip provides a close approximation to a pistol grip. Also, the stock is ambidextrous and allows adjustment of both LOP and cheek rise on-the-fly with rotary knobs. The foregrip has an integrated Picatinny rail with cover on the bottom plus a storage compartment in the grip. It comes with two conventional sling swivel studs and has fore and aft quick release points. Made of carbon fiber and glass-reinforced polymer, it weighs in at a relatively light 3 pounds.

The only significant negative for this stock is that it doesn’t work well with 10-round magazines…but do you really mind having to use a 15- or 25-round mag? (It also has a rubber recoil pad, but we won’t hold that against it.)

Let’s face it: The 10/22 lends itself to moderate to long-range shooting. Tactical stocks are technically designed for combat environments, particularly close-quarters combat, and that just isn’t what you’re going to do with a 10/22…not unless you for some reason have to enter and clear a prairie dog burrow. The Archangel is a quality match-style stock with enough tactical features to be a great choice for nearly every shooter’s needs, and that’s why it’s our choice.