Camping tips and tricks

Do Stores typically have a sale on their camping gear to kick off the season or anything like that? Or am I better off just going and getting what I need for the season and looking into the sales at the end of the season?

Most big chains (EMS, REI, etc) will usually have a kickoff sale for the season. Sometimes they promote it as an "upgrade your gear" sale. Some smaller shops do this too, while some don’t. Usually, in my experience, if you really want the best deals, you have to look at the end of the season, when they are desperate to get rid of their left over inventory. A lot of the time they won’t have any advertised sales for this, but if you go in you will find heavily discounted items from the past season. If you want to find some good deals, try geartrade.com. I have had very good experience with them. It has some private sellers, but a lot of big websites like backcountry,com list their "returned without tags" items for very very hefty discounts (sometimes over 70% off).