I had three of these, purchased together shortly after they came out, a .243, a .300WM and a .338WM. They were all the early MkII versions, with the three-position model70-style safety and the claw extractor but not CRF. Shortly thereafter, the Ruger MkII was modified to be a true CRF action, and I had a gunsmith machine the front of the bolts on the .300 and .338 to the new specs, an easy and inexpensive job that gave me CRF.
I liked those rifles, and used the .300 and .338 as my main hunting rifles for almost a decade. Those two were very accurate, the .300 in particular producing subMOA groups with virtually any load or bullet weight. Sadly, the .243 was much more difficult to love as it just didn't want to shoot for me with the heavier "deer" bullets and I soon moved it down the road.
Those three rifles were beautifully finished, way nicer than the several Ruger 77's I've owned and handled since (and don't even get me started on the Hawkeyes). They were very smooth cycling, although the triggers did indeed need replacement. I liked the feel of those stocks, and thought they seemed to ''give" with recoil somewhat as the guns were a bit softer shooting than others I had in those chamberings...but that might have just been good stock fit. They had those idiotic quasi-Euro-style sling loops on them, which I quickly replaced with the Williams' kits available at the time that fitted the stocks with standard sling studs for normal QD swivels. I also grabbed a couple sets of wooden inserts to replace the grooved plastic ones, but wound up breaking a couple of inserts while hunting and returned to the plastic ones.
Eventually I upgraded both the rifles to Boyd's laminate stocks, and frankly soon regretted it but too late; I had sold off the original paddle stocks and so they wore the Boyd's for several more years until I traded them off. I don't have any Ruger bolt guns nowadays; if I did, I'd be happy to have one of those old paddle stocks on it, but like so many other things that collectors latch onto, their market value is now so far beyond their intrinsic value that I'll never buy one.
