Free: Contests & Raffles.
The reason there are so many Ruger upgrades is because they're necessary.
I've only fired surplus through mine but it's a pretty fun rifle to shoot and relatively accurate. If I were to use some good hunting bullets, do a scout conversion and re-crown the barrel it I would think mine to be adequate for anything in North America.
Yeah, no problem. I used mine (successfully) last year with handloaded 180 gr, 303 softpoints & H4350 using open sights. Scope makes it even better & with factory ammo - just pick what you like & wh.at shoots well.
good luck with the scope mount, a lot of chinese made very poor quality scope mount stuff made for those rifles. I only ever used one with iron.. FWIW I use the 90$ simmons 2x pistol scope on my .308 scout scoped rifles- with good results.