Beware of the '30 day free trial' from Sportsman's Guide.....they just "auto renewed" me for a year....at $39.95.

I'm cancelling, but I am sure its not going to be easy..

You just got hit with the 2005 Porn site "3 day free trial".
 

They did the same to me.  I sent them an email and it was taken care of.  With any luck you'll have as little hassle, Jon.

Yep, did the same to me, I emailed them and they removed it.

And if I remember correctly, they used to sweeten the deal with a $25 credit but  I haven't seen that I a while.

Slightly off topic but I did not realize how this is also a big issue with a number of iOS and Android apps.  During install by default you accept their plan.  Was dumbfounded when one app I used was a subscription, without even being told it was.  

Same happened to me. Signed up for the membership to get free shipping on some ammo. I forgot all about it and was auto-renewed. I called them up and told them what happened. I spoke to a very nice young lady who made cancelling my memebership very easy, including a reimbursement for the auto renewal payment.

in my case it was that 30 or 90 day free trial program special they ran end of last year I think?  I made sure a week before the renewal was supposed to happen, to go into my account and turn it off.  Clearly that does nothing as it renewed anyways.  An email did fix it however, to their credit.  Still I was warned ahead of time that SG is known to do shady shit like that.

An immutable law of internet or mail order commerce: Whenever they ask for your CC # they will bill you after some number of days. 100% guaranteed. 

When I was starting out in this hobby SG had a lot of stuff I needed, like ammo, so the membership made some sense. Unfortunately almost none of their clothing fits me (6'3", 225 lbs, 13 4x wide shoes). Lots of choices these days. No reason ever to buy anything that's not on sale. No reason therefore to give them $40 per year IMO.

there's an option (checkbox) in your account settings where you can set it to auto renew or not. kind of not their fault of you don't do your due diligence if you don't want to renew

It's in the fine print - they can do it - it's part of that checkbox for signing up.  Just gotta be diligent and remember to cancel.

^This - its actually just as easy as Amazon, I always cancel by day 29 -

And I usually get an offer for a new trial every 4 months or so, just when I could use 10% off and free shipping on a case of ammo