gun maintenance

By: Justin Hunold

Imagine you’re there on a premier hunt in the hallowed timber of Arkansas or maybe a two mile paddle back to a slough on public waters that have a horsepower restriction,  or even taking a friend or family member out for their first goose hunt over 5 dozen decoys placed with care in a cut corn field. All that money, time, effort and most importantly experiences relying on your gear. And arguably the most important piece of actual gear you have is your gun. If it doesn’t go bang you can’t do the damn thang. 

Let’s start off by get the obvious out of the way, we firmly believe we offer the best waterfowl gun on the planet here at Retay USA. This article will be centered around to keep our guns  delivering performance boldly redefined. This isn’t a sales pitch. This is about how to help keep your gun running when it’s needed most. And although these procedures will concentrate on Retay USA shotguns, the practices are basically universal. 

Number one, read your owner’s manual. I know “Men don’t read instructions” and that’s great in theory. I mean if you really want to skip this and you wanna go straight to youtube for instructions at least use our official videos. But take the time you’d get lost on Instatokbook and read your owner’s manual cover to cover. You will be able to troubleshoot almost all in the field issues you will run into if you understand your individual gun and not just guns in general. 

Since you cracked the box to get out the instructions you will now be looking at your new GPS, Gordion or Masai Mara you will see some residual grease or oil on the gun. You’re going to see some of the other stuff that comes with your gun like choke tubes, shims, the optics base, lubricant and even sling swivels. The next step  is getting that gun out and getting any residual stuff off that gun.

So, the lubricant and a nice gun cloth will help do this and for most folks this will be the end of the initial clean up process. I personally like to bust that manual out, and break the gun down to as many pieces as I feel comfortable putting back together correctly. You don’t want the first time you take the bolt assembly apart to be in that flooded timber we mentioned above. You know over eighteen inches of water, in the dark, with ducks pouring into the x. 

I personally prefer to strip all residual oils, dust and crud off of the entire gun. I use G96 Crud Buster Aerosol for this process. It strips all the stuff off of the gun surfaces and you can use the straw to get into the nooks and crannies of the bolt assembly. I prefer to strip my bolt down and clean each piece, but some folks won’t want to do this. Once I spray everything off and wipe it down with a gun cloth I let it air dry for a bit. If you’re using a CLP style product you can just reassemble from here. After air drying, I reassemble the gun. I follow the owners manual and check proper function as I go. I will manually operate the bolt, bolt face, trigger assembly and safety. 

“Thanks to its extreme simplicity and excellent materials, the Retay Automatic Shotgun requires no special maintenance.”

This comes directly out of the maintenance section of the Retay USA Owner’s Manual. Basically what it’s saying is oil what seems like it needs oiled. Your bolt assembly, lightly, trigger assembly lightly and if you’re feeling really really froggy maybe the recoil spring assembly. On a GPS look at the action bars.  I like a general lubricant like the one included with your gun for most times and it should be great in most conditions. 

When I hit the colder months I like to find a lube that is built for colder temps and not freezing up. I again turn to G96 but the Complete Gun Treatment. I like it because it performs the operations of cleaning, lubricating and protecting. It maintains viscosity down to -50. Meaning I can run this when I am hunting the Great Lakes or the Finger Lakes during the coldest months with no issues. For most conditions the High Tech Gun Oil that comes with your Retay will be fine.

This will all take place before my gun ever sees the field. Or in a post/preseason general maintenance. There are a lot more in the field and post season and volume shooting maintenance tips to follow this. This is the best way I have found to set myself up for success when it comes to running and gunning with my shotguns. It is the set up. 

I worked at a gun counter for about ten years, all of them at very high volume firearm retailers. I can say that anecdotally when a customer came in with a new gun that was malfunctioning, nine times out of ten it was because they skipped this step. When you go on a long road trip and kinda sit in the car, driving, putting miles on the road, maybe spilling coffee, crumbs and just kinda sitting in your own crud you likely are looking forward to a good shower when you get home. Treat your new gun the same way and it’ll be a lot happier when it wakes up for use. Set yourself up for success. Retay USA shotguns are the best waterfowl guns on the planet. So, do yourself a favor and treat them like it, even though they will work even if you don’t.