Desert woods can look amazing and are typically plenty strong for even very heavy recoil.
But they're difficult to find (especially for full-length stocks), expensive, and most are a pain to work with.
Earlier this year, I finished a knotty screwbean mesquite stock set.
The tree my wood came from was cut in the '50s and the company hasn't been able get more gun-quality blanks since the '70s. When the existing supply is exhausted (about 50 blanks), they'll be done with mesquite.
The only other company that I found selling desert wood stock blanks (screwbean mesquite in particular) went out of business in 2015, because they couldn't get permits to harvest any more trees and almost no one was willing to pay the asking price for his remaining "premium" blanks ($1,300 starting price for a blank that'll barely work for a shotgun butt).
Anyway...
My knotty screwbean mesquite was a nightmare to work with.
Varying hardness. Twisted grain. Inclusions. Holes. Absolute pain in the butt.
It's also very dense and very heavy, coming in just shy of ironwood for overall hardness. (Normal screwbean mesquite isn't quite as hard.)
Of course, the knot holes were
wanted, but they compounded the problems.
It's what I wanted - stocks that looked like they were made from a fence post - and I do like the end result. But...
Never again.
(Butt plate is not finished.)
Next up is some curly maple with a sapwood inclusion that took $250+ off the value. I hope to have that one done by spring.
(Same scope, different rifle.)
And then on to another piece of figured maple with a -$400 sapwood inclusion - but for a Mauser. (-- No good photos.)