Funny you should mention the Brazilian '08 Dogfish. When speaking pf custom Mauser conversions, the Argentine '09 is the one I see most often mentioned as being the best for customization, but you hardly see anything about the Brazilian 1908 Mauser. Back in college, one of my best friends wanted to build a custom "Sendero Rifle" for deer hunting in South Texas and asked for my help choosing components, etc. In South Texas, we use the word "sendero" to refer to long, cleared lanes that are cut through the thick brush. They are typically laid out in a spoke pattern with a hunting tower blind at it's axis. Since Whitetail deer are creatures of the edges, they tend to travel along these corridors. Most deer that is, but the big old bucks will either cross quickly or will hang out in the brush bordering the sendero. Because of this, you need to pick your shot carefully and those shots tend to be long. So, the "Sendero Rifle" was born. It is a long-barreled, super-accurate rifle with a high powered scope chambered in a flat-shooting caliber. The barrels are usually of the heavy, varmint contour, 26 to 28 inches long and they look like a cross between a varmint rifle and a sniper rifle. Anyway, we lucked into a Brazilian '08 that had been somewhat sporterized and used it as the foundation to build his dream rifle. It turned out beautiful and was a "one-hole" rifle from the start. To this day it is his go to gun and he has used it exclusively for whitetails, feral hog, mule deer, elk, coyotes and God knows what else over the past 25 plus years. Even now, that action is still one of the slickest I have ever handled. It's strange that you don't hear about the '08s being used for custom rifles very often.

J