Other problem areas are: improper skinning and salting of trophies in the field; seizure of trophies by various governments; long delays in the export of trophies; long delays in the completion of taxidermy work; poor taxidermy work; and grossly inflated trophy shipment charges.
To expedite the flow of complaints, we have now created a new "Trophy Handling And Taxidermy Complaint Form." A copy of that form should be tucked inside this issue of The Hunting Report.
We intend to handle taxidermy and trophy-handling complaints the same way we handle complaints about hunts - that is, all complaints will be sent out to affected parties for comment before being aired. Once all viewpoints have been collected, a summary of the conflict will be published and subscribers will be urged to order the entire file of paperwork and read it in its entirety.
Our goal is to make trophy handlers accountable for their actions in the same way we have made outfitters and agents accountable for their actions. Such scrutiny is long overdue, we feel, particularly in the area of trophy shipment, where Byzantine procedures appear to be allowing many thousands of hunters' dollars to disappear. Take the case of subscriber William J. Harlow, who had a shoulder-mounted Hartmann's Zebra shipped to him earlier this year from South Africa in a crate that the custom's broker, Coppersmith, Inc., says has a dimensional weight of 95 kilos (209 pounds). The crate was actually shipped at a dimensional weight of 338.5 kilos - or 746 pounds! The final bill presented to........(continued)
