Long story, which I'll try to keep short. One of my uncles brought this back after WWII - he served as a medic in Germany late in the war with the 63rd Infantry Division. The rifle was brought back in its original configuration and gifted to another uncle. Unfortunately, the second uncle has the gun worked over and restocked - he used it for years as his deer rifle and fired commercial 8mm Mauser hunting ammo in it. The bolt handle was altered to clear a new scope - which was mounted using a Marbles Game Getter see-through arrangement. There is also now a low-profile Buehler safety on it.
Somewhere I have a photo of the original, unaltered rifle hanging on a wall in a 1946-vintage deer camp photo. It shows that the buttstock had a typical European/German cheek rest on the left side.
There are no markings (including a serial number) on the gun anywhere, except for a small, neatly stamped "H.M." on the underside of the barrel.
The chambering is also somewhat of a mystery. The bore slugs for a .323" bullet and the chamber is very long. But since the magazine looks to be standard, I'm guessing this gun is either chambered for the standard 8mm Mauser, or maybe the longer 8x60 Mauser.
I have a handful of 170-gr 8mm Remington Core-Lokt jacketed bullets. One of my Lyman reloading manuals shows an OAL with this bullet of 2.85". My chamber measures long enough to seat one of these bullets in a cartridge 3.509" long - so something seems odd. One of my cousins has some brass fired in this rifle and I've asked him to send them to me - hopefully that will answer my cartridge question.
I'm including a few photos of the gun (it's partially disassembled at the moment, so it's not all there). The bore (from the bolt face to the muzzle) measures right at 23-5/8" (or 60 cm).
I would appreciate any thoughts on what this gun may have been originally, and especially on the H.M. markings.
I would normally attempt to restore a bubba-ed rifle like this, but I'm going to sentimentally leave it in its current configuration.
TIA,
Tom