You've almost certainly heard about the practice of sharing licenses. It occurs when a father goes hunting - in Tanzania, say, on a 1 x 1 safari - and allows his son to shoot a few animals. In a more extreme situation, it occurs when two hunters, looking for a way to save money, buy a single safari and split the costs down the middle. In both cases, splitting a license costs the host country serious money and places both the clients and the professional hunter in legal jeopardy.
What occasions this public mention of a sensitive matter is word reaching The Hunting Report that a significant number of license-sharing clients are running afoul of the Lacey Act on their return to the US. The Lacey Act, you'll recall, makes it illegal to import or cause to be shipped across state lines an animal taken in violation of local law where it was taken.
At present, the way license-sharing clients are being caught is by causing their trophies to be shipped home with paperwork showing one person's name on the hunting license and another on the animal permits. Some Fish & Wildlife Service inspectors are taking that as prima facie evidence that the client broke the law in the host country and thus violated the Lacey Act by importing the trophies. If you have split licenses on a hunt recently and you have incriminating paperwork in the pipeline, get ready for trouble.
The point of this item, I hasten to add, is not to tell hunters how to break the law and get away with it, but to point out that license splitting is illegal and that the cat (so to speak) is out of the bag. At this point, it........(continued)
