For future projects, like 5-6 "air drying" years from now, you might check some local sawmills. I believe black walnut grows as far north as Vermont.
A couple years ago, I bought a full pick-up load of air dried black walnut slabs. The retiring mill owner also had a large quantity of gunstock blanks he had bandsawed out, but unfortunately he knew next to nothing about layout. The majority of these blanks had marvelous figure with grain running horribly wrong through the wrist or obliquely where it would meet the rear of a shotgun receiver. He couldn't understand why I chose large thick slabs over his pre-cut blanks. I spent a few hours digging through his piles of stickered slabs passing on many that would make a furniture maker ecstatic, but would not yield one good gunstock.
My truck load should easily yield 30 to 35 one and two peice blanks of mostly AA or AAA quality with a few even better. My cost was $310.00 and after bandsawing blanks, I also had a considerable amount of good scraps for repairs, handgun grips, etc. Naturally, I also had a lot of waste for the fireplace. I made plexiglas templates for rifle and shotgun that I could lay on a slab and find a stock with proper grain flow, good figure, and avoid insect damage, cracks, and bark inclusions.
