The first voices will say its a cut-down rifle. There's a couple problems with that.

1- its not a cut-down rifle stock. its a m/1901 carbine stock.
2- the rear sight base & ladder are marked "c" for carbine. This rear sight is apparently highly desirable among Kragophiles.

Can't prove its a NRA carbine. Can't say its not. The Krag heads were left scratching their heads. Whether it is or isn't doesn't matter. The bore is sharp & shiny which is why I bought it. It shoots Lyman 311299 200 grs very nice @ 50 yds.  

Barrel band means Bannerman conversion AFAIK. ETA: Reading back through it I guess there were a number of different conversions. Might be a 1903 FS? Springfield factory front sights were brazed on. Went through this with a carbine I thought was legit. Check out milsurps.

Serial number is 1900 production, that’s as much as I got.  US Krags and what constitutes being “correct” is a mess.

Yeah and it could be a carbine that was rebarrelled. Looks great anyway!

An interesting piece.  A few ideas present themselves.

First, the band front sight is a problem.  That's not 'original military' as OP points out.  The explanations for that are quite variable, but without any documentation one must assume the worst - pure aftermarket/civilian mod/Bannerman.

Th next question, then, is what the 'original' gun was.  There are a couple of 'ground truths' I think we can hang our hat on.  The first possibility given the receiver marking is that this is an 1898 carbine updated to 1899 specs.  We can pretty much throw that possibility out.  The serial is way too high for an original 1898 carbine.

The next possibility is that this is an 1898 rifle converted to carbine.  Well, if that is the case, someone went to a lot of trouble to do that compared to the usual simple sporterization via chopping the barrel and stock.  And they kept the handguard and rear sight, which isn't common for sporters. (Although the handguard has been foreshortened over the receiver.) And there's no sling swivel on the stock (OP, any inletting or screws there?) and the barrel band doesn't have a sling swivel either. So that can't quite be right, or at least it can't be the whole story.

Perhaps instead someone took a sporterized rifle and dressed it up with a carbine stock and sight and barrel band etc, etc.  Could be, but why do that to an 1898 receiver when you could do it to an 1899 and be 'more correct?' Only reason I can think is someone got a sporter 1898 rifle almost for free.  The numbers don't work out well otherwise.  The stock and rear sight are spendy items.  But, it's possible.

So now I'm going back to take a closer look at the receiver.  Does it look to anyone else that the two '8s' in 1898 seem to differ?  Now I'm kind of wondering if someone stamped '1898' on an 1899 carbine receiver, and then tried to correct it by overstamping the last 8 with a 9.

Perhaps that accounts for a mostly correct 1899 carbine - it *was* an 1899 carbine, but someone messed up the receiver year.  Then, of course, at some point in the last century the barrel could've been replaced.  Or maybe the barrel is original and the front sight dovetail got knocked loose and replaced with a banded sight.  Or maybe it truly is an NRA carbine.

Now, a really interesting note is that this serial number is right at the very beginning of the 1899 carbine production.  If by confused krag heads you mean the KCA, you may have already looked at the observed serial number database and you'll see Joe Farmer noted #225691 as the approximate beginning of the first block 1899 carbines.

Anyway, my $0.02.

I like the way you went through the possibilities. And yes to the KCA. They also hinted at the same possibility as you. I don't collect Krags but always wanted one. My preference would've been a rifle but this one came from an acquaintance and wasn't too indecently priced.

No past sling attachment screw holes.

Dutch

That's an interesting observation, they definitely look different. Does it look to you guys tho like the second "8" in the model year matches the "8" in the SN? I wonder how Springfield punched those dates in. Maybe they had an "18" punch and loose punches for the other numbers?

Here's another one, doesn't look as different as OP's but I can kinda see it:

Have you had it out of the wood yet? Is there anything in the stock channel or under the buttplate?

No, I have not had the barreled action out of the wood.