Just wondering if anyone here knows anything about this type of gun. A fellow here in Canada has it, an would like to know a little history about this type of rifle, or it a one off?
sst

Well Bruce, I don't think id change anything .
I thought some of the german gun experts may shed some light....... Westerner ?????

Looks like a rifle made for shooting wood eagle targets off the top of a pole.  Cannot think of the name just now. Should be a very large caliber.

       Joe. 

It's a VOGELBÜCHSE.  Sometimes a club rifle mounted on a pedestal. You pay your money and take your shot at the eagle. Still at least one club in Germany doing it. They use a huge tower on a hinge. At the top of the tower the wooden eagle sits under a large steel shield. 

        Joe.

Thanks guys once again everything answered 
perfectly.
He is a happy man now trying to find someone who can read German to him...... so he wont be bothering me..Thnx
tom

Joe,

What a great historical find to show those Mauser pics.  Thanks,

Bruce

If you look at the historical data you'll find that in Germany the sport we call "Schuetzen" was not as narrowly restrictive as we have interpreted it here.   Basically it was simply formal offhand target competition at roughly 200 yards.
There were also some VERY old traditional shoots that developed in the bow and arrow and crossbow eras that envolved shooting live birds tethered to a tall pole or church steeple.  (probably also an ancestor of the american live turkey shoots)  later it evolved into shooting a wooden bird to pieces. 
In parts of Europe it is still done with bows and highly evolved crossbows.  With guns large slow moving bullets were all that was required to knock a wooden bird apart at relatively close range.  Scoring was based on the parts knocked off or sometimes by the collective weight of the splinters each shooter knocked free, collected and weighed,

However they also also had offhand target matches for military class rifles including the very early bolt actions,  Some were strictly "military class" and some were for dedicated target versions.  ( Overgaard (SP?) in his series of articles we reprinted some time ago in the ASSRA Journal refers to buying a bolt rifle and a supply of ammo to be used during his European shooting adventures--and shipped back to the US on his return) 
   Some of these early single shot sporting bolt actions were created with stocks, grip "levers", double set triggers, and diopter sights and chambered for the "standard" target rifle cartridges just like the single shot target rifles of the of the era, big bore black powder early culminating with the 8.15x46r (the metric version of the .32-40 schuetzen cartridge)

if you look through the "off-topic" you will find some additional discussion of these "bolt action schuetzen rifles". 
The discussions are there because the ASSRA rules expressly forbid single shot bolt action rifles to keep the 52s and 40x etc rifles out of the matches (which I agree with) and the site's practices and procedures follow the ASSRA guidelines. This thread may find a home there as well
At the time the organization was formed in the late 1940's the vintage original Euro-versions of single shot bolt action schuetzen rifles were almost unknown here.  
Personally I'd love to own and shoot one myself and (as an individual) have some mixed feelings about the rules-----if applied to the TRADITIONAL ORIGINAL bolt action schuetzen sporting rifles

In the pictures of the 1993 tech/instructors,I did notice that the young man with the Germanic AFRO,was showing the shooter where to put the round, to shoot the "BIRD" sorry just had to inject that observation.
57thahc