A lot of the tire comments about tire aging and "age cracking" come from the car industry, and this is probably to be expected as they produce and sell most of the tires.
Our motorcycle tires have tubes inside them that hold the air. The sidewalls and tread on our tires provide structural strength and contact friction, but they don't hold in the air, the tube does.
Old bike tires on Savage motorcycles that hold air are safe to ride and use up. But if you feel safer, spend a few hundred dollars and change them out instead of wearing them out.
Me, I wore the Suzuki originals out (and they were crappy tires, btw) and bought 4 year old Dunlop/Goodyear tires on sale for less than half price and stored them for 4 more years until I needed them.
Stored inside the house away from sunlight and ozone, the tires still look pretty much new when put on and they give me a full normal service life.
Yes, Goodyear has a policy that they will warehouse purge (by sale preferably, but they will cut up and scrap if need be) any tire older than 3 years old -- why? Because tires typically spend 2-3 years in distribution before they get put on a car. Then once on a car a tire generally sticks around no more than 4-5 years.
10 year old tires look rugged, and if tubeless a car tire might have issues hold air at the end of 10 years.
However, the same age of tire on a Savage run with a fresh tube when installed will likely run out its rubber just fine.
Motorcycle tires are GREATLY over-strength on the sidewalls compared to a car tire, BTW. Relative thickness of a bike tire sidewall to a car tire sidewall is 3 times thicker, relatively, with at least twice as much cord material.
Car sidewalls are intended to flex and bike tires are intended NOT to flex at all. The thought of these hell for strong bike constructed tires "failing" because of some cosmetic cracks on the side wall is really pushing it a lot, IMHO.
And the funny thing is the bike tire carries a load of 500 pounds per tire max and the car tire is rated at 1,000 pound minimum for the very least of them (most car tires carry load ratings of nearly a ton each).
How is this? The car sidewall carries NO LOAD, the air inside the car tire carries all the load at 32 psi. In a properly inflated bike tire the same thing is true, the air carries all the load. However, a bike tire can go way down to 10-15 psi before it even begins to sidewall flex (and tell you it needs air). The sidewalls are that much overbuilt on a bike tire.
Yeah, I used to work in the tire industry as a Quality Engineer and then later as a Manufacturing Engineer, so I know a little bit about them tires. My last good paying job in Industry before getting put out to farm was with Goodyear Tire and Rubber.
Plus, I have personally run both types of tire on a motorcycle - and remember boys and girls, car tires trying to go onto bike rims have a very hard time making the rim transition and the steel beads inside the car tire rim can really truly break in two on you, so please don't put car tires on motorcycle rims.
(fingering the big scar on his left wrist as he types this warning)