I have several mounted trophies and , in a separate shipment, dipped and packed trophies. Do members have suggestions for receiving agent in Western Canada?

Jim

jhaney,

The rules followed by Customs are really designed so that non-commercial imports are easily done by indiviuals. In fact, some of the customs brokers won't even handle non-commercial imports any more. If you are sending the unmounted pieces to a taxidermist right away, the taxidermist may have a broker.

I cleared a shipment myself in February and a couple of issues popped up. The first was that a CWS agent used dated info off the internet instead of his dept.'s own data and pulled a sitatunga skull out of the shipment. That was a shock, and it took some digging around to be sure I hadn't made a mistake and to find out what he should have done. After a couple of phone calls and e-mails, things were fine. The CWS agent appears to have gotten a talking to by his boss and even offered to deliver the skull to my house.

The second issue was what to pay duty on. One person was insisted that yo have to pay GST on the taxidermay work AND the trophy fees as well. The person who finally did the paper work was sure that duty was required only on the taxidermy. I liked that answer better and at that point stopped asking questions and paid up.

Despite these hiccups, I've cleared my own stuff twice now and really do find it easy. As a soft separatist I hate to say it but CWS and Customs were proffessional, helpful and easy to work with.

Dean

BTW What are you bringing in?

I had dealt with a guy named Dale a few years ago at an outfit called Talon Distributors in Edmonton who helped me temporarily export my Caribou mount to the USA for the Pope and Young convention. I don't have a contact number handy but he might be worth checking into. He was helpful and had a good handle on the import/export rules.