I am reworking an old sporterized 1903 in a fairly decent piece of walnut worth saving. I have removed the plastic grip cap and will replace it with a checkered steel Niedner knock-off from Midway. The recoil pad is one of those horrible red ventilated jobs with whiteline spacer that Pachmayr sold so many of, and I will replace that with a simple, solid black or red pad. The forend tip seems to be solid black plastic material of some sort, with the damned white spacer. I am not sure how these were attached, so should I just saw through the spacer to get it off, or can it be popped loose with a chisel? I don't know if these were typically just glued on or doweled on or what, and don't want to take any of the forend wood with it.
I'd love to reshape the forend to resemble the graceful schnabel that Fred Adolph used, but am so dangerous with a file that I will probably just find a chunk of contrasting wood and redo the forend tip.

My guess is that it is just glued on. Some of the ones I have seen are actually hollow inside. There might be dowels holding it, so what I would do is cut it with a saw about half way between the end of the stock and the tip of the black plastic. Be careful, since if there are dowels they might be metal.
By cutting it like that you can get an idea of the cross section and be able to plan from there so you don't damage the end wood of the stock.

Thanks, Congo!