Over our dinner at a private quail plantation in South Georgia, I talked with Arthur S. DeMoulas, the American owner of London best-gun maker Boss & Co., about the company’s gorgeous new 12-bore ambidextrous sidelever.

The new 12-bore sidelever over/under, called the “1812 Edition,” celebrates the company’s founding that year by Thomas Boss. It’s also a tip of the hat to Boss’s original sidelever side-by-sides popular with the Victorian gentry.

Some people might call it a twinge of melancholy, especially with the arrival of autumn in the Northeast, but you begin to feel an obligation to tell a story about your life that few people have heard, with an eye on the distant horizon toward posterity. For me, this particular story is about my contribution to the most remarkable flight of British best guns ever made.

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.