Any Thoughts On This Large Old Bowie? Knife?

[antique peddler]

This old knife came from an old barn cleanout in southern Ohio, I've been on the lookout for a genuine Bowie knife so I latched onto this real quick, it is a full quarter inch thick and tapers to a very good sharp edge, The blade is a full twelve inches long (though I swear it was only eleven inches the other day, darn thing may be growing), overall it is eighteen inches long, and two and a half inches wide at the broadest point, the weight is two pounds, it had some sort of waxlike substance covering the entire surface that I scraped off to inspect it, you can see that there are grind markes all over but it doesn't feel amateurish but quite smooth to the touch, the steel has some pit marks, the handle area is tapered in thickness to less than a sixteenth of an inch with two pierced holes of about three sixteenths diameter each,the additional small sleeve piece can be slid a ways but will not come off over the end of the handle which may indicate that the handle was worked or hammered after the sleeve was added, I don't see any saw marks that would make me think that this was someones machine shop project, I'd be glad to read anyones opinion on it, Thanks, Phil.