Hi Marcus,
The only explanation I can think of is what I have said in previous threads here: as stocks are concerned, the whole of the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries were dedicated to experimenting with different forms, obviously in search of the anatomically perfect shape of the buttstock. This, however, has only been found by the 1660's, in France; it is known as the French buttstock (German: französischer Flintenkolben), and is still used almost unaltered with many English shotguns.
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