I have little experience with mausers but in my experience with the mosin nagant family of firearms they are very gritty actions, hard trigger pulls, very hard bolt cycling, garbage safeties if you have greasy/sweaty hands. I can't imagine a gun that could perform as poorly as the mosin nagant. I even spent my spring sporterizing one and it is still a horrible example of a firearm.
given the multiple similarities between mausers and springfields I would make an uneducated guess based on my personal experience with springfields and recommend the mauser over the M38 for hunting.
however if you are looking at this purchase as a long term investment the M38 would be the smarter trade because the M38 is going to rise in value exponentially over the M48 because they are rarer. right now you may get the M38 for cheaper and they are not nearly as nice of a shooter but 10 years down the line the M38s will easily draw more at the counter than the M48s and in 50 years they may be as sought after as German K98s are today.
it's all about total market, correct market and demand, the fewer that were produced, the more that are sporterized and the more demand there is then the more you will be able to get out of it down the line. M48s kindof missed the whole sporterizing phase of american history where you could buy one at sears for $14 and modify yourself so they will probably stickk around for quite a while compared to the M38s.
