As it happens, I AM a Yugo Mauser guy. I just don't know Germanicon details.

I'm, being persistent because, well, I have Croat (Hrvat) in my DNA and I'm stubborn as an old goat. Secondly, I'm not getting any thought out answers (save from Calif Steve there). Folks are just saying the bird "doesn't look right" so it's a "fake" or 'fantasy piece.'
When someone asks me about a Yugoslav rifle, I break it down for them, good or bad. This stamp is this and that one isn't that and then this one on the back of the front... So that they know what they have or don't have.

There is so much going on with this that is right that one questionable stamp doesn't signify. There was so much going on in Yugoslaviaicon with different warring groups using who knows what weapons and repairing them as best they could, that anything is possible and deserves examination rather than being dismissed out of hand because it does not fit some preconceived notions.

An opinion from two other fellows I know allow they think it could be Partizan work. In particular, in 1941, the Germans took over two major arms works in Yugoslavia. They decided to concentrate their production efforts at the greater of the two and shut down and just closed the second and left it. That factory had been busy making Yugoslav M1924b rifles. Those are Gew.98 rifles with barrels cut down to and the rifle reconditioned to be a duplicate of their model 1924 rifles. Is this rifle was stamped MOHEN1924b (approximating Cyrillic script) this would be a shoo in.) But it isn't. A model 1924 repaired with a Gew.98 barrel cut down to "short rifle" length. Converting such barrels to that is what they did there. Is that a Gew.98 barrel? I don't know. As I said, I'm a Yugoslav guy. After a few months, the Germans bombed and recaptured that arms works. The Yugoslavs had dispersed the majority of the material there.

The changed serial number? It's matched to the rifle receiver. Nothing odd about that. Someone suggested that a surplus Gew.98 from, sayyy, sarco c