How to Get Your Trophies Home

Taxidermy Move-in Day

The title suggests there is a prescriptive and simple step-by-step process for ensuring your trophies arrive home in a reasonable time. Of course, there is a process, but it's not easy or straightforward. If you are a hunter running it or constantly trying to determine progress, you are likely to be consumed and possibly overwhelmed by it. And, depending on what expectations about delivery timing were set up front, you are also likely to be disappointed and frustrated to the point of exasperation.

Timely trophy delivery stands out as a universal dissatisfier among hunters. Many hunters have come to us because they have been disappointed about the time and effort it has taken to get their trophies delivered from international destinations into the hands of their taxidermist. Many have waited for years and are still waiting. Some got their trophies home, but the horns were switched and skins were too spoiled for mounting.

The most common root cause of each crisis is that whomever the hunter was dealing with, outfitter and/or agent, did not consider trophy management as important as the hunt itself. It was not considered to be an integral component of the hunt they advised or conducted, or what they paid for in totality.

In fairness, there are many uncontrollables involved in getting trophies home -- meaning that an outfitter or agent does not have direct control over every aspect of export readiness and import efficiency. Again, in fairness to agents and outfitters, the process is complex, costly, and time consuming.

Exporting and importing depends on getting trophies from camp to a place where they can be processed by a mix of governmental agencies and multiple service providers. Many outfitters and safari operators do not transport trophies from camp until the end of the season. Then, a whole web of service providers comprised of in-country shippers, local taxidermists, veterinarians, export documentation processors, packers, and shippers must be engaged – all involving a system of cost quotations and payments. The process requires intensive stewardship to advance forward efficiently, and the value-added component is communications so that the hunter is kept informed.

• It would be helpful to hear this up front, “here’s what’s involved and what you can expect.”

• It would be helpful to hear this continuously during the process, “here’s where we are.”

If you are relying on yourself to run this process or if your outfitter or booking agent is not, you are likely to be understandably anxious. Exporting/importing trophies works best when your hunt organizer takes ownership of trophy management as part of the hunt. In fact, the hunt is not over until the trophies are delivered in a reasonable time frame and in good order. This should be a capability and principle agreed before any hunt booking, most especially for international hunts.

For 26 years, we have viewed every hunt as an end-to-end system that begins with defining a hunter’s goals and preferences, proposes and conducts hunts that match them precisely, and ends with getting the trophies home. We manage everything at no extra cost and feel accountable. Any outfitter or service provider we work with also feels this way.

One example of our difference can be explained in a brief story. A group of us hunted brown bear on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Our hunters were able to take their personal rifles and enjoy outstanding success. We departed camp in mid-May and two of the bears were life-size mounted in January, less than 9 months later.

Not every country or specie or regulatory agency will allow this level of efficiency. But this example is useful for highlighting the difference between an agent or outfitter who is in business making hunt bookings and conducting hunts and a hunting consultant who is a personal advisor intent on building relationships for life and provides exhaustively comprehensive services.

If you have shot yourself in the foot, just don’t reload. Work with people who feel genuinely responsible for trophy delivery as an integral part of their offerings.

Contact Pantheon Hunters® at info@pantheonhunters.com, or by phone or WhatsApp, at +1 (585) 267-0724 to learn more.