Some of you met Sam at the AR get together last year at the Giraffe bar S.C.I. Convention.



Big game, big gift (Chicago Sun Times)

Mounted animal collection worth $2 million goes to Benedictine U.

January 6, 2007
BY DAN ROZEK Staff Reporter
He trained for the trip to Asia's remote 25,000-foot-tall Pamir Mountains by climbing the stairs in a 31-floor suburban office tower with a 50-pound pack on his back.



The effort, though, says Sam Pancotto, was worth the result -- bagging an exotic Marco Polo sheep, a high-altitude herbivore famed for its curling six-foot-long horns.

"I trained real hard for it --and I was lucky to get that one," said Pancotto, now 79, recalling his 1988 hunting trip to the Central Asian region when it was still a part of the now-defunct Soviet Union.

That sheep is part of a unique collection of more than 50 animals that Pancotto and his wife, Rosemary, have donated to the Jurica Nature Museum at Benedictine University in west suburban Lisle.

The menagerie of stuffed and mounted animals includes a pair of lions, a brown bear, along with many deer and antelope the Pancottos hunted all over the world.

The collection is valued at more than $2 million, but the Oak Brook couple are donating it to the school, which plans to use it as an educational tool.


6,000 visitors a year
"I'm thrilled to be giving them to a good home," said Pancotto, a retired building contractor.
The donation will bolster the already wide-ranging collection of more than 10,000 animals, including more than 250 mammals, held by the Jurica museum.

It draws more than 6,000 visitors a year -- and the new additions will enrich the displays that help teach visitors about differing animals and ecosystems.

"This collection will also provide a vehicle for thinking about our attitudes towards wildlife," Mary Mickus, the museum's education coordinator, said in a statement.

The museum includes many displays, including an African savanna and a re-creation of an Illinois prairie. The lions donated by the Pancottos will help complete that African diorama, while the other animals will enhance several other displays, Benedictine officials said.

"It's going to be a fine addition to our collection," said the museum's curator, the Rev. Theodore Suchy. "It will enable us to complete some of our dioramas."

For Pancotto, donating the animals is a chance to share his family's passion for nature and outdoor adventure.

He recalls traveling and hunting all over the world with his wife and their four children -- and more recently with his three grandchildren. It was a chance to spend time together -- whether it was trekking across Kenya by camel and horse, or hiking and hunting in remote locations in Alaska, Asia or Africa.

drozek@suntimes.com

Sam Pancotto and his wife Rose (who has at least one, and maybe more than one, hundred pound elephant to her credit) are an amazing couple who hunted Africa and the entire world together, as husband and wife.

I can't wait to see this collection.

When one sees a gesture of this magnitude, its makes me proud to be of the hunting faternity...
Wish I had met the team of Mr. & Mrs.


Mike

How was it valued at $2,000,000, by what authority? How much of a tax write-off could this possibly be good for, for the high income donor? Sam and Rose did very well for the public and themselves, eh?

Just planning for my future donations.


Hopefully Sam and Rose will have plenty of quality time left to go visit the museum, and continue to enjoy their good works.

You can bet the IRS will be watching for this one. Recently there was a fellow, can't remember the name who had a real scam of this sort going. He provided the museum and the apparaisals, which let the hunters have a tax write off with the net effect that the hunt was free after taxes. Maybe someone else remembers this.

The nicest people you will ever meet,and dear friends..........

The IRS has recently revamped the regulations dealing with the valuation of taxidermy donations.

Now it is only possible to deduct the value of the taxidermy itself, without factoring in the rarity of the specimen, the cost of the hunt, market value of the mounts, etc.

This regulatory change was an extreme reaction (IMHO) to abuses by some who would find or set up a non-profit, donate mounts and then deduct vast, unrealistic amounts from their income tax obligations.

That is not what is happening in this case, needless to say.

It was an extreme reaction a bit like the three martini lunch restriction on business entertainment. With the alt min it isn't that big of loop hole and the proper reaction would to have had better audit results in the unrealistic zppraisals. The government in its normal throw out the baby with the bath water solution.