You can own the best hunting equipment money can buy, but just like letting a nice vehicle fall into disrepair, failing to maintain your hunting gear will turn your prized gun into a bucket of rust. And who really needs a bucket of rust? Exactly. To keep your gear in good working order — and avoid having it fail you in the middle of a hunt — Field and Stream‘s David E. Petzal offers his tips for housework when the hunt is over.

dscf0015 Photo by GunsmithTalk

About this time many of us are heading home from the fields and forests filled with the thrill of victory (got it) or the agony of defeat (didn’t get it) and are ready to forget about hunting for a while. Not so fast. You have work to do.

It concerns the maintenance of your equipment, and the reason you must do it now is because if you don’t do it now you’ll forget about it, and when next season arrives whatever repairs you haven’t made will jump up and bite you…

Photos: NosweatGear (top); GunsmithTalk (above)