Many years ago I used to frequent a fairly wild place on a river. I would take my canoe, sometimes I would spend weeks there, fishing, hunting and exploring. This area was well known from the old west for ranchers, Indians etc. During the early 1900's to probably the 50's there were hermits/squatters living in the area in caves and such. Once I found, (actually my dog found) a buried, camouflaged dugout shelter with a wood burning stove, lanterns and relics. Appeared to have been covered and hidden since the 60's or early 70's. Someone had dug a large hole about 3 feet deep, covered it with cedar timbers and piled the dirt back on top. Large enough to fit a couple of people. It was dug into a hill, with an entrance tunnel about 5-6 long. It was actually in pretty good condition.

This gave me the idea to bury a stash for myself in case of SHTF. I had a plastic ice chest that i would bury. The lid of the chest was a tight fit, you had to pull on it to open it. Dug a hole a little deeper than ice chest size, cut some cedar branches to cover it, plastic tarp over that, then buried it all. the top of the ice chest was about a foot below ground level. I was too poor at the time to bury a gun, but I did put in some 22lr shells and other ammo, cans of food, some cash, fishing gear, etc. This was on the riverbank about 20 feet above the normal water level. I left it alone for a few years. I know for a fact that there were floods where the water level covered my stash, probably for days at a time.

I would check on it occasionally, not digging it up, but making sure it was still camoed and had not been found. And that I could still find it. I could kind of stomp around above it and tell it was still there. I had told my brother and a couple of friends that it was there, but they did not know where exactly.

After about 5 years I decided to dig it up to see how it was holding up. My brother and I went down river one weekend to get it. There was some brush growing on top of it by now, but we found it and dug it out pretty quickly. With great anticipation we opened it up and found everything in excellent condition! Everything seemed to have stayed dry and mostly rust free. The cash had deteriorated a little bit, along with the paper labels on the food cans. There was even a couple of cans of beer that we popped open and enjoyed. We shot some of the 22 ammo and added a few items, then reburied it. Ended up removing it a couple of years later and everything was mostly usable.

This was in an area with sandy, well drained soil. It might not have worked as well in the area I live in now with heavy clay soil. However, I think if I were to bury a gun, I might do something like this. Maybe put the gun in the bottom of the chest, box, pvc tube or whatever, then cover with oil to prevent rust. As in several inches of oil. You could probably make some sort of rack above the layer of oil for ammo, or the wooden stock of the rifle. Or completely fill a piece of pvc pipe with oil to keep the gun submerged.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!