Charley Dickey (1921-1998) was for many years one of America’s best known and most-loved sporting scribes. A generalist, he wrote on subjects ranging from deer hunting to trout fishing. However, his work is best remembered for warmth and wit and an uncanny ability to go to the heart of the matter with a few well-chosen words and some homespun philosophy.

Dickey could find humor in the simplest subjects and often poked fun at himself. “My most congenial behavior,” he reckoned, “always seems to happen when I’m with a person who owns a lot of quail land.” He spoke for every befuddled bird hunter in the midst of a mad search for missing paraphernalia the eve of opening day when he commented: “I’ve never known an outdoorsman who owned all the gear he thought he needed. Even if he owns it, the odds are that he can’t find it.”

“Absolutely stunning.” That was all my friend could say, and the fact that he was so impressed really impressed me. We were standing together, leaning over a sturdy oak table. Windows framed the room, and lined up in front of us were two vintage British shotguns-one side-by-side, one over-and-under-as glimmering as the day they were built.

The shotguns were part of a collection we were evaluating and appraising. Once we had lifted each from the leather luggage case and realized we had perfection, we had stopped to behold the sight before us. My friend has collected firearms for more than 25 years. He has seen it all-from vintage Purdeys made for British Royals to Hartmann & Weiss over-and-unders, perhaps the finest shotgun made today. For a firearm to impress my friend, it has to have it all: superb quality, exquisite physical condition, and once-in-a-decade rarity. The two shotguns before us on the table had all of that.

They were both 28-gauge and made by the exclusive London firm Boss & Co. In its history, Boss made just over 10,000 shotguns. Of those, fewer than 50 have been 28-gauges. The two we were looking at were 60 years old and as like-new as any vintage British shotguns we had seen.

On a chilly November morning, it did not take much imagination to picture the troop trains, pulled by coal-powered steam engines. Here they refueled and brought on water: Aberdeen, South Dakota, was the natural hub. It was a vibrant railroad city, with travelers headed to both coasts, as well as north and south.

My grandpa enlisted in the military in December 1941. Tojo had set Pearl Harbor on fire and National Socialism was on the march in Europe. The Army shipped grandpa and hundreds of thousands of other farm boys from the Upper Midwest south to boot camp. Along the way, grandpa most likely stopped in Aberdeen. Fourteen rail lines intersected there and ran to every point of the compass.

Aberdeen was about as far from the war as a place could be, but the residents of the Mount Rushmore State city knew they could touch the lives of soldiers who would soon fight and die in places like Normandy and the Philippines. Every day, the troop trains rolled in and it was not long before the locals organized an effort to make sandwiches, which they passed out with chocolates and a glass of milk.

What Aberdeen had a lot of was pheasants. Someone decided it would be a good idea to make pheasant sandwiches.