Nope! Never seen anything like it in my life before. But, because of many things that occur in service, it's my guess that this rifle has been damaged and made good by building up with weld. I say that because although we wouldn't rebuild one up if an ear was broken off (we'd just scrap it out of hand) although we would and often did, file/ream a distorted/bent over axis pin hole.

One other point was that we utilised this hole as a known datum for 'squareness' when fitting a new barrel. This was because this hole was never 'used' in the sense that it would ever become worn out because the axis pin cannot rotate. My guess is that it has been repaired by bubba (see how I'm learning all these quaint old wild colonial phrases....). You could use it with a PH5 series sight or mill the ears off and start again.

Intersting!