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It is an octagon-round with a full length integral rib. It has all the usual German proof marks, dated 12/26. I’m not sure about the Bayard marking on the action of what appears to be a German made rifle built on a commercial Mauser action.

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Not really a commercial Mauser action, as the "Bayard" mark shows. But this is a lengthy story. When WW1 broke out, all nations soon found out they had far to few rifles to supply the vastly expanding numbers of their armies. In Germany, the existing factories making Gewehr 98 rifles could not meet the demand. So from 1915 on part of the Gew98 production was "decentralized", with many other companies supplying parts. Several Suhl gunmakers, Haenel, Schilling, Sauer & Sohn and Simson, supplied complete Gew98 rifles put together from parts made in house and bought in. The bottleneck of M98 production was always the making of receivers, requiring special machines. The Suhl makers never produced a single 98 receiver. They depended on machined receivers from other sources. Most of the "Suhl" receivers came from the government arsenals Spandau ad Erfurt, but many were supplied and marked by SH = Siemens & Halske and Bayard = Pieper in occupied Liege, Belgium. Why Pieper? Imho this was merely a cover up of the real source, FN in Herstal near Liege. Officially the patriotic Belgian Fabrique Nationale never collaborated with the German occupation. To me, this is incredible. I can not imagine that big factory and all it's workers sitting idle for four years. Alas, up to WW1 the majority shareholder of FN was the German DWM, Pieper being the second largest one.
In November 1917, a year before WW1 ended, the making of Gew98 rifles in Suhl was stopped, as the German armies by now had more rifles than men. But lots of parts in various stages of completion were left over in Suhl. During the interwar years, up to WW2, the Suhl gunmakers used these action parts from the WW1 production to build sporting rifles. Accordingly, Mauser sales of commercial actions plummeted. There were plenty of cheap M98 large ring, standard length actions floating around. So nowadays you often find Suhl made sporting rifles as well as Remo and Geha shotgun conversions with that mysterious "Bayard" mark beneath the receiver ring to confuse collectors.
BTW, the barrel of this .318WR rifle was made by the well known Suhl barrelmaker WK = Wilhelm Kelber, Beiersgrund 3, Suhl.

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