As I noted early in this thread, the form of the rifling and crown were dead giveaways that it had been rifled post 1900. The narrow land/wide groove style was not seen before 1900 and maybe much later, like 1930s. If it had been “freshed” it would retain the same form. What Bobby Hoyt does is not “freshing”. He drills out the old rifling, reams the barrel, and rifles the larger caliber bore to a modern style of rifling with lands no wider than grooves.
There are definitely 19th century firearms with narrow lands and wider grooves and pronounced crowns, including muzzleloaders. I see it on European percussion target/dueling pistols and some of the finer target rifles. I will agree that the style of that rifling and muzzle do look a lot like 20th century and current contemporary rifling patterns and muzzles.
But there are other auction platforms which pick up and provide buyers the opportunity to bid. If another platform added information which was not provided by the auction that had the rifle, that seems to be inappropriate. At the same time, if Evans had this information and failed to make it known, that too would seem inappropriate. Whatever the case may be it's a great little rifle and the controversy about contemporary/original only adds to the mystic...and appeal, at least it does at this price. If it sold for many times the price it may not be so appealing. And if it actually "won" a national competition, that's a bonus. HOWEVER I don't view the rifle as the winner, it was the shooter.
In my experience, the major third part online auction sites like Proxibid, Invaluable, etc. get the auction information they have posted directly from the auction houses that they are hosting. I can't see any reason why a third party auction hosting service would have a different description unless there was an error.
