A friend handed me a family heirloom Winchester shotgun that he had found in pieces in his grandfather's house.

When he decided to hang it over his fireplace, he wanted it inspected and cleaned.

This job fell to a mutual friend with no real technical gunsmith skills training who likes to tinker with projects like this one.

However, the job proved to be more than a match for our friend and the need for a real gunsmith was soon evident.

Ironically, the need for a really good gunsmith has rung true over the years in my own experience with firearms.

There was the bitter cold winter day in buck season many years ago that my college roommate had a dandy buck lined up outside of Slippery Rock.

I was just about frozen myself and decided to bid my buddy goodbye and walk back to our apartment complex. As luck would have it, a buck stepped out in a field that we had been watching and my partner had the drop on him.

He raised his rifle and pulled the trigger — and nothing happened. The rifle was frozen and would not fire. Too much oil had caused the bolt action to turn to sludge and made the rifle inoperable.

I walked the trail away from the scene without knowing the frustrating predicament that had played out.

Unfortunately, over the years, I have met and known many hunters who have described similar equipment failures. I thought that some advice from a professional gunsmith might be useful.

I'm fortunate to know Frank Marshall, who has more than three decades of experience in the sporting and military firearms business. I asked Frank to give my readers some good advice when it comes to their hunting arms.

Frank likes to use the term PMCS, which I found stood for Preventive Maintenance Check & Services, as the best advice for sportsmen.

He said the lack of maintenance and proper cleaning was the top problem with faulty firearms.

Too much oil of a kind that is not specific to firearms is a typical problem. Regular lubricating oil will turn to sludge in freezing weather and render your firearm useless. The oil also collects dirt and debris when in the field, and a dirty firing pin will not do its intended job.

The second area of failure is in not checking the guard mounts and screws, which pull the stock in tight to the action.

Loose screws also cause problems with your scope mounts and make zeroing in a rifle a nightmare.

One of my hunting companions was at a loss as to why his expensive Browning rifle was hitting all over the target. A quick check of the rifle found the problem to be loose screws, which were likely caused by the recoil of the rifle while being fired frequently on the bench.

With some tightening, he was back into the bull's eye.

The third suggestion is to go over the entire firearm and strip it down with cleaning solvents and oil especially intended for firearms.

If you are unsure of how to disassemble a firearm, let a competent gunsmith do the job for you. He can check your bolt assembly, do trigger work, mount scopes properly and more.

The same fellow who wanted to tackle the older Winchester shotgun was putting a scope on his magnum rifle. When it was suggested that the scope needed to be moved up a bit for greater eye relief, he waved us off.

We watched as he fired the rifle and the recoil of the magnum pushed the scope back into his eye, cutting his brow and giving him a shiner.

Unfortunately for him, it took a lesson like this to learn about adequate eye relief when mounting a scope on a rifle.

Plan a great first day of buck season, but don't let it become a disaster that you can easily prevent with a little early season maintenance on your firearms.