On a mass-produced gun, yes, I'm sure the wood is left proud to save some time/money.

But on a hand-made gun it's left a little high to allow for a few refinishes on the wood. (Obviously some wood is sanded away in the refinish process and you’ll have less when you’re done than when you started.)

The photo below is of a stock maker at HEYM finishing up the edges of the wood. You can see that the wood is a little proud, but you can also see that with just a few more minutes of work how it could be flush with the metal.

Planned refinish in the future or not, I tend to err on the side of caution... you never know what might accidentally happen to the stock, drop it, bump it etc... and you might want to have the stock refinished without the whole stock really needing it.

As I'm fond of saying:
It's just a little wood: real easy to take off... but harder than hell to put back on.