Danish Snider – A strange plate at the top of the butt

One thing I was unsure of was an odd plate on the rear upper section of the butt. It looked like a base plate for a tangent sight however I could see no reason for the Snider having such a thing plus it was too far back so unless it was shot as a back gun, or perhaps field mortar would be a better description… Anyway the idea of a Snider for target shooting as a back gun seemed totally impractical and I was curious so I took it off today to see what was underneath.

Nothing! Well very little is a better description. The plate holds a small rectangle of brass in place. My initial reaction is the plate was a suitable place to stamp an identification  number/name/unit on the rifle, certainly the military issue M/89 Krag Jørgensen some 30 ish years later was fitted with a small round brass plate for unit identification so this may be for the same purpose however this does seem like a rather elaborate method for such a basic rifle. The only other thing it could be is a location point for something and the brass section is merely there to fill in the hole until the ‘thing’ was fitted but somehow this does not really seem likely in my mind.

Hopefully someone who knows will be along in a bit.