doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com sending guns to ones self for hunting trip

My only experience with this is shipping two guns to Kansas for a pheasant hunt about a year ago. Used UPS and had no problems at all. They showed up at the lodge a few days before I did; had the owner ship them back to me the same way after I got home, again, no problems. They were REALLY packed up, tho!

Rick B, Dave K, Recoil R - thanks for the help with shipping USPS. I was not choosing registered and will see what cost difference is. The more important thing to me is that it is accounted for each time it is handled.

-jerry

registered mail is the safest, most secure way to ship anything to anywhere. it's also the slowest. took i think it was 11 or 12 days for an FAL receiver to get from fort worth to newport news, VA. unless the guns are xtremely valuable, monetarily or sentimentally, i'd just do priority. if you do registered you better allow 2 weeks.

roger

My experience has been that Priority mail usually takes two days from the East coast to the Rocky Mt. or Southern states and three days to Texas and the West coast. Registered mail may take one to two days longer but I have never experienced the delays fnb25 has experienced. I always ship on Monday or Tuesday to avoid having the parcel spending the weekend in a warehouse.

I just shipped a gun from Colorado to Michigan via-usps registered. It took twelve nerve wracking days. When the package arrived it was damaged on the outside and the goofy paper tape they make you use was missing in several places. During the whole ordeal I couldn't track it using the usps tracking system. After seven days of not being able to track it, I went to the post office branch I mailed it from and even they couldn't find it their system. All the clerk would do is shrug his shoulders and tell me to be patient. I've never shipped anything that was this slow.

This experience has made me very reluctant to use usps registered again.

yes! had forgotten the tracking (or lack of) aspect. no on-line tracking. had to go to customer service office at the main branch here. they couldn't tell me where it was either and that until it had been some length of time, they didn't even consider it a problem. i refunded the buyers shipping because it was such a pain. the guns i've mailed priority have all gotten where they were going in fine shape. the only thing from TX that takes 3 days is west of the rockies or the upper east coast.

but the PO did say that registered items are locked up each day and accounted for at every step which is why it takes so long. IIRC to get the location info tho required a claim to be filled out for a lost item which, i think, was a month before they considered it lost.

roger

I've shipped guns to myself for hunting trips. For me, the shipping-to-yourself method has a smaller hassle-factor than traveling with the guns.

I carefully box the gun and print my own shipping label using my digital postal scale, etc., from the USPS website I then drop the gun off at my local post office. No waiting in line - I place the package on the counter and let the busy clerk know that "this one is ready to go," and leave them to it. For shorter hunting trips, I include a prepaid return label and packing tape along with the gun.

All my firearms are insured through Sportsman Insurance Agency, Inc. (http://www.siai.net/) for loss or damage during shipping, so I am not affected by the $500 insurance limit imposed USPS when printing my own shipping labels.

One advantage of shipping a gun to yourself is that by sending it early, you can verify that it has arrived safely before you actually leave home. That way you have time to make other arrangements (travel with a replacement, borrow a loaner, etc.) if your first gun is lost or temporarily misplaced. Not that anyone wouldn't be devastated by losing the first gun, but at least the hunt can still go on after buying the airline ticket, taking time off from work, etc.

--shinbone

The big benefit of shipping by Registered Mail comes when you hit expensive guns. There is a whole different schedule for insurance fees for registered. It is very cheap. the savings in inusrance fees will more than pay for any difference in other shipping fees. I dont have the registered chart in front of me but I have shipped some 5 figure guns and used them.
If time is of the essence, then Priority Mail by all means.

read the fine print with UPS and FEDEX. They will not pay the claim on an expensive gun no matter what you paid for insurance or that they accepted it for carriage. I have been down that road. They have a sub classification for guns. They will take your money for insurance but try to collect when they snap that buttstock of that Purdey SLE in half.

Important to remember that USPS Registered requires paper tape on all seams of the box.

PITA when you don't know this until you get to the post office.

I have shipped guns to myself for several years. Perfect way to go.