All right fellow hunters, I am the very lucky winner of the Andrew McLaren hunt contest for 2010. It has been a great adventure thus far getting the hunt, contacts, equipment and plans together. May 14th is coming quickly and my friend and I are ready to go. The last thing on my list is the Dip-n-ship/broker/shipping arrangement for the return of the animals we pursue and harvest. I do not know the entire process and would like everyone’s opinion and recommendations. I live in Rockwall, TX, about 20 miles East of Dallas. Any information would be greatly appreciated. My cherry will be popped soon.

Congrats on your winnings. Andrew may be able to help you out with the dip and pack. I had my animals mounted in SA by KwikTan and they compared quotes from a few shipping companies. I used Coppersmith out of Grand Prairie to clear customs. Contact Don Truly there.

JCM, get ready to shell out to each and all. A quick breakdown of my seven animals included $600 dip and pack, $2600 air freight Bulawayo/Dallas, $500 for Coppersmith and another $400 ground shipment to Victoria, Tex for tanning. Still have to be then shipped back to Abilene for taxidermy. So I will have roughly $4500 in mine from the ground in Zim to the taxidermist in Texas! So far I have been ripped off more than most and hopefully you will not break this super effort on my part to be #1!

You are going to have a blast...we always take taxidermist's tags with us and have the hides shipped to our taxidermist care of Advantage Fur Dressing (tannery)in Houston, Tx and the customs clearing is done by Wells Worldwide in Houston. We go ahead and have the capes tanned and then shipped to our taxidermist or to our home if we are not going to have the animal mounted right away.

OUCH! I believe Muygrande did get ripped, I have not been hit nearly that hard (yet) that is part of the reason I ship to the taxidermist c/o the tannery...cuts out a bit of the middleman.

I had 17 animals shipped airfreight(shoulder mounts except for 3, and backskins) from Joburg to Dallas for $2100. Coppersmith charged $720 with a CITES Bontebuck from a 2001 hunt.

IMHO, do not allow any tanning or taxidermy to be done in Africa. Andrew should have a logistic company that he has faith in and uses, use them. You should get a message from that company sometime (months?) after you get back with a charge for Dip & Pack (this is a seperate charge from the dip & pack charged by the PH). After that is paid you should get a second message from the company (possibly months as well), that everything is crated and ready to ship, they should give you the option of pre-paying the freight or freight collect. You ALWAYS want to pre-pay the freight, even if the quote for the two options looks close, the freight company never takes into account the state side logistic companies mark up (usually 100%) to pay to recieve the freight then bill you. The best thing is to understand all of the parties involved, You shoot the animals, your PH skins/salts/packs and ships these animals to their packer in Africa (the PH typically charges a "dip and pack" fee for this). That packer dips the hides, acquires vet certificates, export documents & packages the hides for shipment out of the country (they charge you a dip and pack fee for their services). The packer arranges their freight company to pick up the package and ship it to the U.S. (the packing company should give you 2 quotes for this, one is pre-paid and the other is freight collect, the difference in these two prices is only the difference in what the exporting freight company charges to wait for their money). The packer will also have a logistic company that they use State side to receive the shipment and clear it through customs, after the package ships, this will be the next person you or your taxidermist hears from. The Stateside logistic company is going to charge you for clearing the package through customs, recieveing the package and getting it to your taxidermist. They are also going to charge you the freight plus a mark-up (usually 100%) on that charge if you did not pre-pay it before it left Africa. Bigguy458 has it right, your taxidermist should have some laminated tags that you take with you, give to Andrew and they attach to all of your hides and skulls that make sure they end up at the right place. Good luck, have fun and use some of the above advise to cover your cornhole when it comes to getting your animals back to the US.

On my last bills the dip was $90 per animal for skull, horns and cape, cheaper if it is skull and horns. Then the packing is 25% of total dip bill. Then they give it over to an African shipping company who will email when it is ready to go and you can prepay or have them send it collect if you are using a broker here in the states. If have used Coppersmith's and they do have an office in Dallas, TX. Coppersmith's shipping and frieght to my taxidermist door was $2800. We had a total of 30 animals. Total bill for dip/pack was $2600.

And my taxidermist received my stuff a couple of weeks.

I am tagging this thread. Good info.

505 gibbs, that is an excellent summary of the process and will be a great help for anyone trying to understand all the steps involved.

Well, I honestly think it depends on what you want done with the trophies. Shoulder mts., or euro mts. and capes.

I did the euro/capes, and had them done at Highveld Taxidermy, in RSA. 6 Euros, 3 flat skin rugs, and a zebra skin rug/felt back, all in, including air freight from RSA to Chicago, was $2660. So a lot of what it's gonna cost, depends on what you are gonna do.

Mad Dog

quote:

Originally posted by jcmckinney1:
All right fellow hunters, I am the very lucky winner of the Andrew McLaren hunt contest for 2010. It has been a great adventure thus far getting the hunt, contacts, equipment and plans together. May 14th is coming quickly and my friend and I are ready to go. The last thing on my list is the Dip-n-ship/broker/shipping arrangement for the return of the animals we pursue and harvest. I do not know the entire process and would like everyone’s opinion and recommendations. I live in Rockwall, TX, about 20 miles East of Dallas. Any information would be greatly appreciated. My cherry will be popped soon.

I'm located in Murphy, TX, just east of Plano, and we took our first RSA hunt last Sept.

On the recommendation of Mr. Keith on this board, we used Trophy Solutions Africa. They did a prompt job and shipped the animals in just over 3 months. The only thing that they did different from our request was to ship in two separate crates vs. one and it *was* on our invoice as one. If I recall it was around $100 US per animal for processing. Airfreight to the U.S. was around $600 for mine, and $1200 for my hunting partners. The exact numbers are posted in the thread I started at Packing and Shipping Charges

We are lucky enough to have Mr. Huffaker in Abilene, TX, doing our trophies and he made recommendations for the broker and tanning. I'll let you contact him directly if you're interested.

Good hunting and start planning time off for your second trip.

This whole pack-dip-ship is just getting to be the absolute shits.. It is getting to the point where I just want to leave my stuff there and then use the money saved to hunt more. It was an absolute pleasure to not have any upcoming costs or worries after I got on the plane in Harare last year after the elephant hunt. These companies (taxidermy-shipping) have hunters by the balls when it comes to this.
I am dreading paying these damn bills twice this year but at the same time, I want the trophies I went so far to get..

I wish there was a way to bring the stuff back with us as excess baggage like I did from New Zealand. I brought back a stag rack and cape, 2 tahr capes and horns, and a chamois cape and horns. Had all paperwork with me and I breezed through LAX customs in about 10min with all this in tow. Same for the various Asian hunts.

I sure wish we could get a cheaper, more streamlined way of doing this.

JCMcK

My experience over the last few trips has been different to 505's!

In RSA at least you should only pay ONE Dip/Pack charge, sometimes flat price per trophy, sometimes on a scale , maybe $75-125 per animal, and a crate charge on top of that, sometimes your outfitter will do all dip/pack/crate and sometimes they will arrange with a taxidermist to do it, then it must be shipped to a US Port of Entry. Some taxidermists have exemptions to bring stuff into alternate ports [like Houston]- talk to your choice of taxidermists about this.

As soon as I hear from the shipping company, I contact an import broker [your shipper may recommend someone, but in your location, if you are using a local taxidermist, Coppersmith makes the most sense.]

After the broker is on the case THEY will arrange all the details with the shipper, [you should have already gotten a quote from the shipper]. I NEVER PREPAY SHIPPING I think the surcharge for a collect shipment was $25 a few months ago [shipping collect seems to get things moving from there quicker, and you will be able to use a credit card to Coppersmith, or whoever,in the USA to cover both the shipping and the import charges.] Then you can pick up the freight yourself or have the broker [Coppersmith?] send it on to your taxidermist. BUT that may have changed??? All raw trophies may need to go to a taxidermist first. I think Swine needs to go to a taxidermist first no matter what. [Your Taxidermist and /or import broker will have those details]

If you have all the taxidermy done over there, and have it shipped as Ocean Cargo through Fauna and Flora in NYC that shipping price will be door to door to you. I have done it both ways and it seems to be a toss up pricewise. Some say the taxidermy here is better, but I have not seen any difference yet.

Feel free to PM me for more details.

Les

All these replies are good, and should give you a great place to start.

My only other suggestion, since your first post did not mention it, is to be sure to select your taxidermist now, before you go. He/she will be able to guide you concerning these dip/pack/ship/clear topics using first-hand experience. Be sure you choose a taxidermist with significant experience in African animals and the handling thereof.

Since you live in Rockwall (I'm in Dallas), don't forget that you can clear the trophies yourself at DFW. I've done this three times, the last time being in 2008. It's not a big deal, and saves the clearing broker expense. If you want to pursue this route, it's very important to coordinate with your taxi for shipment or deliver to his tannery or to him if he's going to send the hides off himself.

I must give a plug to Jerry Huffaker in Abilene. You won't find a better, easier-to-work-with taxidermist. Look at some of his posts on here in in Taxidermy forum. He's used to working with self-clearing hunters and he'll steer you straight. He does amazing work.

Feel free to PM me if you wish to discuss the self-clearing process.

That's good advice about chosing your taxidermist before you go. As one thing no one has mentioned is that I know is true for warthogs and maybe the same for the other stuff now is that raw trophies have to goto a USDA approved facility. Some taxidermists are, others are not. So by picking your taxidermist before hand it can all be worked out if he can receive the shipment or if has to go directly to a tannery.

Yes, that "approved" taxidermist thing was a change not too long ago as I recall.


Of course doing your taxidermy over there solves that problem as well as the Dip/Pack issue, as D/P is not required for completed taxidermy, or you should get a credit for it if collected along the way somewhere.

[Crating and shipping to your home will be more expensive as completed taxidermy, but, if Ocean Shipping is used it seemed like a wash, the last time I checked.]

Les

Jason,
I'll give you my experience since I hunted with Andrew last year and went through the exact same process you are about to enter and I wanted my taxidermy done stateside:

1. Andrew does not charge an additional fee as the PH/Outfitter to field prep your trophies and deliver them to a dip/pack service in SA. Other guys may charge for this. Andrew doesn't. Check your paperwork from him. He probably mentioned it.

2. Andrew made a mild recommendation to me for Marakalo Trophies for dip and pack services in SA. Here's why it was mild: often, the dip/pack service will pay the PH a commission for referring his clients. Some PH's will shy away from this since any poor performance on the dip/pack service's part also reflects on them.

3. Marakalo charged me $770 to pack 3 blesbuck skulls, 2 springbuck skulls, 3 impala skulls, 1 black wildebeast skull (w/cape) and 1 kudu along with a dassie cape for my boy. They charge per head of game and the price ranged from $30 to $100 per head depending on size. Trophies were well packed, horns labelled and all was in order according to my taxidermist. There were enough mothballs included to kill Mothra himself.

4. Log Win Logistics in SA charged me $406 to pickup at Marakalo and ship to Atlanta. They shipped collect to Coppersmith just to make it easier for everyone to get paid.

5. Coppersmith in ATL charged me $472 for clearance and customs and an additional $150 for ground transport from ATL to my taxidermist in NC. Their communication sucked. They failed to advise of additional shipping delays and did not confirm receipt of my paperwork even after multiple emails. I wouldn't do business with them again.



I paid Marakalo just before they completed dip/pack. I paid Coppersmith just before they shipped from ATL to NC by ground.

I just want to thank everyone for their input and recommendations.