I've had this Merwin Hulbert for a few years and shoot it occasionally. I got some repro grips to use so I don't break the original orange mottled grips.
Recently I noticed that it has something scratched into the roundels at the top of each of the original grips. It's hard to photograph, but it looks kind of like a capital "P" over a "V." It could be just a prior owner's initials, but the way they're connected the design looks similar to cattle brands I've seen. Just for fun I looked for cattle brand registries, but the online ones I found made it seem like you had to know the location before you could look up the brand, and I didn't get very far.
This may be a wild goose chase, but is there some way to look up cattle brands of the (presumably) late 1800s? If that's even what this is.
--DJ