Strange (to me) Mauser 98
I bought a custom made rifle at a local gun shop a few years ago. Beautiful workmanship. The recent post on checkering on laminated stocks made me think of it. The stock is made of 1/8" Walnut strips and nicely checkered with "super grade" type swivels installed. A lot of action work was done including a model 70 style safety, FN type floor plate release button, jeweled bolt, Timney trigger. It is a "short" action with the 3.225 magazine box and rebarreled to .350 Remington Magnum and magnaported. Some one spent a lot of time on this rifle and some one spent a lot of money on it, too. An odd thing is the markings: They are not in ordinary letters. The receiver rail is marked (as near as I can type) NPEAY3EhE 44. But the N is more of an upside down U, the A is twice as large as the rest of the letters, and the h has a line across the top. The left side of the receiver ring is marked with a circle with a vertical line through it followed by HJP. The right side of the receiver ring has a 4 didget serial number preceded by an upside down L. It has a scope base so I see no sign of a crest. I have it on my inventory list as "Serbian"; I don't remember why. Anybody know where this action was made and for what country?
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The siderail on your mauser is the Preduzece 44 marking indicating that it was made at the Zastava plant in the former Yugoslavia. The scope base is hiding the model designation, but it should be marked M48 or M48A. The only difference being the M48 had a milled trigger guard and floorplate, and the M48A having stamped units.
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look something like this, these 'yugo's' were imported in great quantity 20 some years ago and sold for under a 'c' note for used ones.
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Thanks, guys. And yeah, Mike, that's it exactly! I wish I was smart enough to post pictures. The one I have was turned into a beautiful sporting rifle. With the .350 Rem Mag chambering as well as other features it seems to have been intended as a heavy game rifle.
Another question: Were these rifles made strictly for in-country armed forces or also made for export?
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some were made for export as well, the one pictured is 'new'. these are post ww2 production with a few 'up-grades'.
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While most of the imports came in looking pretty new, there were some that saw action in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I recall also some sniper versions coming into the country with the Zrak sniper scopes fitted.
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I have another M98 large ring short action that I got 40+ years ago. I inventoried it as a "Yugo". It's still an 8 with an original step barrel. Likely, it too, was made at the Zastava factory? It has no markings except for the 5 didget serial number prefaced with one of those strange letters. Again, I suppose there may be something under the scope base.
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