I have already decided to go with the splinter fore-end as Holland want me to stump up $4000 extra for the semi beaver which is silly. Ref optics, over here in Spain most gunshops have a wide variety to check out and compare and for the life of me I cannot see the difference between a Leupold VXIII and a Schmidt and Bender or a Schwarovski (forgive spelling

) Whatever scope I do get will be a 1.5-4 x 20/24 QD. Many thanks for the input, rgds, Mike Bailey