April 24-25, 2019 Extraordinary, Sporting, & Collector Firearms
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/24/2019
Beautiful, post-war, Austrian made rifle with 23-5/8" superposed barrels with matted solid rib, pedestal mounted caterpillar front sight, and 2-leaf express rear sight. It has double bite Greener barrel extensions and double lugs. It has single trigger and extractors. Rib has the makers name and address. Mounted with extremely beautiful, skip-line checkered, French walnut with three piece forearm and capped pistol grip stock with straight comb and shallow cheek piece, 13-1/2" over its original black composition buttplate. Boxlock receiver is coin finished with Merkel style double scalloped back edge with Merkel style reinforcements on the sides. It is beautifully game scene engraved with vignettes of two very detailed Cape Buffalo in a veld scene on the left side, two male lions in a woodland scene on the right scene, and a bull elephant in a woodland scene on the bottom, with flourishes of foliate arabesque patterns in the other areas of receiver. The opening lever, top tang, trigger guard and forend iron are engraved to match. Barrels and buttstock have sling swivels which contain a permanently mounted, thin, black leather sling, probably from the factory. It is purported that this rifle was built for Mr. William Hodgdon, of Ogden, Utah, of the famous gunpowder family, in the 1950’s, which is borne out by the 1958 date on the rifle. Apparently Mr. Hodgdon was a personal friend of Mathieu Browning, nephew of internationally famous John M. Browning, who both served as intelligence officers in Europe during World War II. Mr Hodgdon told consignor that at the end of the war he and Mr. Browning did an inspection tour of the Franz Sodia facility and decided to order identical rifles at a later date. Mr. Hodgdon and Mr. Browning made several safaris to Africa before Mr. Hodgdon suffered a debilitating injury. Having been a graphic artist prior to World War II, Mr. Hodgdon personally designed two of the three scenes engraved on this rifle, with the third scene of the buffalo coming from a photograph taken on of his safaris. Consignor purchased this rifle directly from Mr. Hodgdon just prior to his succumbing to cancer (This rifle was sold to our deceased client by Julia's but we could not find the paperwork in his estate). CONDITION: Extremely fine. Appears to have been fired, but if so very little. Barrels retain about 98% of their original factory blue, and the receiver all of its original coin finish. Wood is sound with a minor handling and storage nick or two, and retains virtually all of its fine, hand rubbed oil finish. Mechanics are crisp. Brilliant shiny bores. Sling is fine. The workmanship of this rifle is of the very finest quality with near perfect wood to metal fit.