Taking Your Guns out of the USA - African Safari

Ok, I get it.  The government wants to know what guns are leaving the US for what purpose.  And equally important, what guns are coming in.  I'm fine with all that.  But the system put in place for honest people to take rifles to Africa for a safari SUCKS, and sucks BIG TIME.

I'm posting this in hopes that one day I may need this information again and it will be easy to find.  And if anyone else can use it to save them some time, help yourself.

To export a rifle from the US (to go on safari, for example), you need three pieces of data:
1.  AES Direct Export Filing Number
2.  US Customs Form 4457
3.  Customs form for the country of import (in my case, South Africa, I needed SAPS 520)

To get an AES Direct export filing number, you have to create an account in AES Direct.  Sounds simple, right?  Wrong.  To create an account, you are required to have an IRS employee identification number (EIN).  Start there, with the IRS.  Register yourself as your own company.  I put in that I needed the company EIN for the sole purpose of creating an AES Direct shipment.  It went through just fine.

Next, you need an Account Manager.  I signed myself up as such.  Then you have to take the training - approximately 45 pages.  And you have to pass a quiz to ensure you have the knowledge.  And on this quiz, you must score 100%.  Fortunately, AES tells you what questions you missed and you get to try a second time to get it right.

As an account manager, you have to create an additional Shipping Account.  Again, I signed myself up to be said shipper.  Now the fun begins.

You get to create a shipment for your rifles to leave the US, but more importantly, to get them back in the US.

In AES Direct, you must complete the following sections:
A)  Shipment Information
B)  USPPI
C)  Ultimate Consignee
D)  Equipment Details
E)  Commodity Line

The good news is that once the section has been completed appropriately, it turns GREEN, giving you the impression that it MIGHT go through.

Through trial and error, I FINALLY got my shipment made.  It was awesome that I could put more than one rifle on the form.  Thus my hunting buddy does not have to do this for his rifle - it's on the same shipment as mine.  And he owes me BIG TIME now.  I took screen shots of all the data I entered into AES Direct and saved them.  If I do ever have to repeat this process, I shall refer to those photos.

The reason you did all the above was to get your AES Direct shipping number to put on the US Customs form 4457.  Now you take that number with your rifle to any US Customs Office (in a locked case) and have them complete the 4457 form.  Me?  I had to take my rifle to Indy for inspection.  Other than the drive, this took all of about 15 minutes.  Relatively painless.

Then, I completed the 8-page SAPS (South African Police Service) form 520.  Fortunately, via a Google (TM) search, I found a sample form on-line that someone had scanned.  This really was the easiest part of the whole mess.

Now I think I am ready to LEGALLY export my rifle to South Africa (on the plane with me).  But most importantly, I can get that expensive bugger back in to the US after my trip is over.

And for the record, any photocopies you make (forms, passports, licenses, etc) MUST BE notarized or they are invalid.  Good to know.

All told, I have at least 15 hours of work in getting the proper paperwork completed.  Yes, I'm complaining, but it really is a small price to pay to have the opportunity to hunt in Africa.

I also found (again on Google) a firm that would complete your paperwork for you, at a meager price of $100.  Next time?  You bet your A$$ I'm going that route....

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cleaning Winchester SX3 / SX4 Shotguns

Image
The Winchester SX4 is my Go To shotgun for everything - clays, doves, ducks, geese, pheasants, whatever.  It is an awesome firearm.  The drawback?  There are multiple moving parts and a few of them like to collect carbon.  And this carbon sticks as if it were put on those parts with super glue! Specifically, the magazine tube and the gas piston are the main carbon collectors.  Those parts come out more black than silver & gold. The inner components of an SX3 / SX4 with highlights where carbon will form So what is my trick for cleaning those bits?  I drop the gas piston into my Hornady sonic cleaner.  Inside the cleaner I put in about a cup of Hornady's One Shot Sonic Clean Solution for gun parts, add some DI water, a couple squirts of Dawn liquid dish soap, and then top it off with a dash or two of the citrus version of Dr. Bronner's pure castile liquid soap.  I have found that the citrus Dr. Bronner's is awesome at removing grease and oil....
Read more

Winchester SX4 Trigger Assembly Update

Image
First, you need to read the post immediately before this one to understand why I had to take my Winchester SX4 shotgun apart - all the way apart - specifically the trigger assembly. Second, my bad.  I had neglected to clean the gun after returning from last October's pheasant trip.  I had about one bale of grass seed inside that gun, which in the end, may have kept the #8 pellet from getting out on its own.  Shame. Finally, I did not give up.  I watched four different YouTube videos on how to disassemble and reassemble the trigger group.  Sadly, no one did the SX4, only the previous version, the SX3.  Close enough.  Why did it take 4 videos?  Because no one explained HOW the damn sear goes back in.  Everyone either ASSUMED we all know how OR in two cases, the reassembly process was out of the camera frame.  Aggravating! The key, and this is more for me to remember, was on the fourth video, the author said, "The sear kinda slides down int...
Read more

Determine Sex of Deer from Tracks

Image
It IS possible to determine from a set of tracks whether the deer you are tracking is a doe (female) or a buck (male).  And, it's actually pretty simple if you know a few facts about deer. First, you have to know what a deer track looks like.  Deer leave a track that looks like the outline of a heart. Next, you have to know the direction of travel.  Deer are moving toward the "pointy" end of the heart.  So in the above example, the deer is traveling toward the top of this post, or up. Here is an actual photo of deer tracks in the wild so you can get a better idea.  Again, this deer is traveling up, or towards the top of this page.  (It is also clear that this deer was STANDING, not walking - well clear enough to me.  Read on to find out why I know that). Sometimes if the ground is soft or if the deer is traveling really fast (jumping), the track left will show the deer's dew claws at the rear of the direction traveling, like so: The ...
Read more