My last buffalo hunt with CMS produced a unique trophy, a buffalo with a snare long embedded in his horns and face, so I wanted to bring it home to mount. The trophy was delivered to the shipper, Afropride Freight, and the air waybill for shipping was produced on July 8 of this year. Trophy crate was delivered to Ethiopian Air for carriage on July 12. Apparently, it sat in the airport in Harare for quite a while (no one can tell me how long, I suspect it was forgotten) and finally left Harare on August 8. It was delayed a couple of days along the way and finally arrived at Dulles early August 14, was taken to the CBP inspection area for agriculture inspection the same day. And there it sat. Ethiopian Air didn't tell CBP that the crate had been delivered and I don't think it is CBP's job to look for deliveries. No calls to Ethiopian Air were answered and there was no response to emails, and their tracking system has been down for several weeks. Emails to the shipper were sometimes answered but with the same answer, that the crate had arrived in Dulles on 8/14. Finally, last Friday my wife reached a USFWS supervisor (female, very helpful) who was able to somehow locate the crate and gave my wife a number for a CBP supervisor at Dulles. This supervisor was a female, too (helpful) and actually did her job and had someone look for and find the crate for inspection (they located it because it had my name and email plastered on it). It had not been inspected because Ethiopian Air had not attached the shipping packet which had the Cites and veterinary certificates. We emailed a copy of the packet to the Inspector, who said we had to have a customs broker to clear...not true, and he was sent the section of "his" regulations related to that. Then he took exception to the veterinary certificate saying it had too many options for compliance...so, CDC regulations sent. He finally agreed to release it (either he was new or was an anti hunter, asshole for sure). He released the agriculture hold and Forward Air was to pick it up and deliver to DFW, except Ethiopian Air had neglected to give Forward Air approval to move. Over the weekend tracking searches and phone calls to Forward Air showed no record of the waybill. So, Monday of this week my wife once again called the CBP supervisor and she said that she would contact Forward Air and have them move it from her warehouse, and that she did. It left Dulles yesterday morning and arrived at DFW this afternoon. With any luck I will be able to retrieve the crate tomorrow (I clear my own trophies and have filed eDecs for USFWS clearance). The last shipment I had from Zim came on the same airline and was lost for over three weeks and was finally found by a USFWS inspector in Houston (though it was routed thru Dulles), I am done bringing trophies home unless I get a leopard or a 60" kudu or a trophy elephant. Oh...and the cost to ship a crate weighing 57 KG was $2708.00 US, ridiculous. And if I manage to collect one of those trophies I damn sure wont ship it Ethiopian Air. Or Turkish Air, that's another story...

Karl -sorry to hear this tale of woe, especially when I still have to get my leopard and other trophies home! I hope it comes through tomorrow.

Karl,
I agree, it's far more trouble and stress than a person should endure to accomplish what should be a straightforward matter. Sadly this sort of situation seems more the norm now for shipping of legitimatley obtained hunting trophies. Here in New Zealand I just landed ( with my usual brokers involvement ) an Aoudad from Texas ( hunted November 2022 ! ) and a Bezoar Ibex, hunted in Turkey late last year. For both there were multiple obstacles but mostly around getting airlines to accept the cargo. Most now have head office policies of refusing to ship hunting trophies. A couple of lesser airlines that did book then rejected the bookings at the last minute which really threw spanners into the works as cargo was already sitting at a transit airport. But eventually both trophies ( separate shipments ) arrived on airlines that initially refused to ship !
I also have trophies to ship from Zim that have been ready for a while. Shipping is paid for but we just can't get an airline to accept the cargo. The alternative found is seafreight but as a consolidated shipment for which we have to wait on trophies from Namibia to make it complete to allow shipping to proceed.
It's unreal the time I've spent chasing all this around. Similarly, I'm wondering whether all the hassle is worth it.

Picked up trophy shipment this morning, took Al of an hour and 20 minutes. Not bad considering one has to make 3 stops (USFWS, CBP and carrier) that are several miles apart.

What a hassle! I guess you should consider yourself lucky they didn’t try to soak you for “storage” charges!

I do consider myself lucky as far as storage charges. Forward Air still gives 3 free “working” days of storage and their storage fee is $80.00 per day as opposed to Turkish Sir’s 24 hours of free storage and then $200 per day, or any part of a day storage fees. My last shipment Turkish tried to charge over $1400 in storage, even though they never scanned my shipment into their warehouse. Didn’t pay it, but I wonder how many similar shipments that are handled by a customs broker, who is spending someone else’s money, are charged the same?

Hope all works out
Good report and heads up for rest of us what to watch for and be aware of
Thanks Karl
And we are all thankful for your report

Karl,

It stinks you went through all that, but it sounds like a very cool trophy.

I am pretty much done with taxidermy myself now. We just sold over a 100 of my father’s trophies at auction after keeping some sentimental ones. The estate netted under $12k after commission to the auction company. My sister was all hot and bothered, but that was just under my estimate. She even was bothering me to market them to DSC or DGC members. I had to explain to her that hunters want their own trophies and can tell story about the hunt that produced the animal on the wall.

I will say seeing the heads being hauled away was pretty emotional because I was on many of those hunts. Selling off 200 or so guns wasn’t as bad because we kept his favorites. Those sold were mostly just safe queens.

With all that said, I think it will be photos of the animal with similar exceptions.

Sorry to hear that. I have a box from Zambia that should be shipping in the next two weeks by Ethiopian/Forward Air to DFW. I will make sure that I stay on top up of it. My taxidermist recommended Ethiopian/Forward over Turkish, as Turkish is screwing folks with storage charges at DFW.

please post a photo of your trophy when you get it home and unboxed. Sounds like a nightmare in transport.

quote:

Originally posted by Wesheltonj:
Sorry to hear that. I have a box from Zambia that should be shipping in the next two weeks by Ethiopian/Forward Air to DFW. I will make sure that I stay on top up of it. My taxidermist recommended Ethiopian/Forward over Turkish, as Turkish is screwing folks with storage charges at DFW.

Your taxidermist is 100% correct regarding Turkish Air’s storage scam.
Your shipment will go to Dulles and receive CBP agriculture inspection there before moving by truck to DFW. CBP inspector didn’t get in a big hurry for these inspections, took about a week due to the inspector wanting additional information, although the info he wanted was inside the crate. Ethiopian Air cargo tracking system is not working (even for CBP and USFWS, I had to show both on a third party site the serial date at Dulles). If you send a PM with your phone or email I’ll share the numbers that were helpful.