Off Season Storage for the Gear That Only Comes Out Part of the Year

A shotgun that only comes out for six weeks of dove and duck season spends the other ten and a half months doing nothing at all. A fly rod gets nine months of good weather and three of sitting in a rod tube in the garage. A traditional bow might see the field a handful of weekends a year, if that. That long stretch of doing nothing is exactly when most of the damage happens, because gear that is actively used gets handled, wiped down, looked at every time it comes out of the case. Gear that is put away for the season gets closed up and forgotten until the next time it is needed, and forgotten is when rust, mildew, and a bow left strung the wrong way for months quietly do their work with nobody watching.

Shotguns after the season

A shotgun coming off a season in the field has usually picked up more than it looks like it has: powder residue, field moisture, maybe a little mud or marsh water that never fully dried before it went back in the case at the end of a long day. Cleaning before storage matters more here than at almost any other point in the year, because whatever is left on the metal when it goes away for eight or nine months has that entire stretch to work on the bluing undisturbed. Model 100 at 52 inches covers a standard length shotgun stock to muzzle. For a break down or over and under gun stored disassembled between seasons, the barrel and receiver are sized separately: models 511 or 523 for the 36 inch barrel section, and 512 or 524 for the 24 inch receiver section.

Rods over winter

A fishing rod stored for the off season faces a narrower problem than a firearm does: less rust risk on most modern rods, more risk to guides, ferrules and reel seats from being knocked around loose in a garage or truck bed over a long stretch of not being used at all. A rod stored bare against other hard gear for months is exactly how a guide gets bent or a tip section gets nicked without anyone noticing until the next trip. Sack-Ups sizes a rod and reel sack for a one piece rod up to six feet, silicone treated the same as the firearm line, meant to keep a rod from being the thing that quietly takes the damage while it waits for next season to start.

A traditional bow

A traditional bow left strung for months at a time stays under tension the whole time it is doing nothing, which is not what a bow is built to handle over long storage. Unstringing it for the off season takes that tension off the limbs entirely. Once it is unstrung, the bow still needs the same protection from humidity and temperature swings as anything else stored for months, since wood, horn and the finish on a riser react to moisture the same way metal does, just more slowly and less visibly until the damage is already done. Model 501 at 66 inches and Model 502 at 72 inches cover a traditional bow either strung or unstrung, sized for the bow itself rather than adapted from a firearm sleeve.

What customers who store gear seasonally actually say

Jimmy Minor of Granville Gunworks said he discovered Sack-Ups had protected all of his firearms from damage, and recommends using them for storage inside a gun safe. Mark S, a customer since the 1980s, said the sleeves provide real protection and peace of mind and can almost substitute for a padded case in a pinch. Ernie Harbison, who is the VP of the El Paso skeet and trap club, said the sleeves work well both inside and outside a gun vault and in the truck, and that he has passed the recommendation on to club members himself. Three different storage situations, in three different owners' own words, all landing on the same point: the sleeve is doing work whether the gear is in daily use or sitting through the off season.

The right sleeve length depends entirely on what is going into storage, and the guide to choosing the right length for what you own covers the full range from compact pistols to full length bows. For the mechanics of why a closed space traps moisture in the first place, the piece on rust inside a closed safe walks through it in more detail, and it applies just as much to an off season storage closet as it does to a safe.