IMHO the "soul" of a gun is in the eye of the beholder of that gun. Gunner's Gun for me has lots of soul, it invokes memories each time I take it out and creates new ones as well. It might mean nothing to someone else.
Sometimes you just see a gun and pick it up and something happens (this occurs for me at least three times a year at the Southern and Hausmanns) a case in point is a lovely DHE 20 with 30 inch tubes and a Charles Boswell 20 that weighs a scant over 5lbs. Both these came home with me immediately.
Hand craftsmanship also tends to allow a gun to have soul as evidenced in Parker, Fox and most English guns as does the well cared for usage of that fine firearm. The question of "where has it been? what has it hunted? who carried this before me? The stories these could tell also adds to the soul of the gun.
At the end of the day it's a personal feeling soul for me might not qualify as soul to someone else.
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There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter...Earnest Hemingway
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