In the late 1890s, Boss & Co. Proprietor John Robertson dedicated himself to perfecting the single trigger for sporting guns. History would prove that, in fact, it would take someone of Robertson’s singular genius to commercialize the advancement we now take for granted.

The mule-drawn bird wagon trundled through Chokee Plantation in Leesburg, Georgia − a 5,800-acre homage to the vanishing wild-quail hunts that for generations put meat on the table and tendered sporting birds by the good graces of the land.

In America, you would be hard-pressed to find a more magnificent collection of fine shotguns than at the Safari Club International Convention, held this year during the first week of February at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. One of our perennial favorites there is Austrian, Peter Hofer. Mr. Hofer specializes in drilling shotguns that include rifle barrels in a brilliant display of artisanal workmanship befitting royalty. At the 2017 SCI convention, he unveiled his latest creation, “The Peter Hofer Special Double Shotgun with Hidden 17 Hornet Rifle Barrel.” We asked him to explain the intricacies of designing and building it.

− Irwin Greenstein, Publisher, Shotgun Life

There were at least two Browning Superposeds in Ernest Hemingway’s life. One of them was a very early model that may have come indirectly from Val Browning, the son of John Browning, the genius who designed the gun. However, neither its serial number nor its fate are yet known. However, the second B25 − as the Superposed is still known in Europe − is a standard–grade 12-gauge field gun, Serial No. 19532, with double triggers and 28-inch barrels (both choked Full) with a ventilated rib. It was made in Belgium and sold to Master Mart, a retailer in Fremont, Nebraska, on 26 October 1949 for $195.20. After that, we don’t know how, when or where Ernest Hemingway acquired the gun, whether new or second-hand, or what he accomplished with it, but we know where it is today and how it got there.