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Congratulation, Buckstix you caught a very rare bird here. All Transition pre-98 Mauser actions are rare, but the cock-on -closing type is the rarest among the rare. Most transition actions seen are cock-on-opening with narrow gas escape holes in the bolt body. When I met Lud Olson years ago, he had seen such an action only once on an experimental military rifle at the Aberdeen Prooving Ground collection. Later, Jon Speed was not aware such actions existed and published photos of # 17’s bolt on page 25 of his “Archive” book.
Mauser, Oberndorf numbered all their commercial production in one sequence, regardless of action size, complete rifles of any type or actions only. Up to 1945 total production ran up about 126500. Up to about 1901 you find left over Transition actions mixed in with the various full blown 98 actions, but most are of the less uncommon cock-on-opening version. So I guess less than 100 of your type were ever sold commercially.
Your action already shows the typical Mauser set trigger, built into the special lower tang without a separate housing. The lever release floorplate and the bolt hold down spring finger are Sauer add-ons. You can make out that finger ahead of the bolthandle in the photo I posted above.
The Mauser commercial serial number is 27, while the Sauer & Sohn number is 76838. The set trigger kick-off is a replacement, taken from another rifle.
The rifle was proofed in Suhl for the 1900 standard 8x57I load, 2.75 gram = 42 gr GBP = rifle flake powder and a 227 gr steel jacket bullet. Proofing was done by using the smokeless “4000 atm Special Proof Powder”, shown by the CROWN – crown/N marks. The bore diameter is given with the gauge number 172.28. The “Wilde Mann” was a Sauer & Sohn quality- and trademark.
The Prussian miltary acceptance eagle on the top right barrel flat shows the rifle volunteered/served as a stop-gap sniper rifle in 1915 – 16. Perhaps the original stock was damaged in the trenches and the rifle had to be restocked after the great war. The pencil script in the stock seems to be German. After 1916 the rare scopes were most often removed from these militarized sporting rifles and remounted on Gewehr 98 military sniper rifles. Finding rings to fit the old inline Sauer claw bases is about as likely as cracking a lottery jackpot. These mounts are out of print for more than 100 years by now. They were handmade anyhow. Myself, I have never seen such a mount. A really good German gunsmith may take some raw claw scope rings from EAW and mill and file the corresponding hooks, but it will probably be more expensive than a new rifle.

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