Thread: Importing Deer heads from UK. Advice needed.

Morning Team.
Recently I was in UK, and fortunate enough to have a couple mates take me out hunting. Managed to bag a Roe Buck and Muntjack Buck (Apparently the Muntjack was of Gold medal size/ quality, and thus, all my UK mates were thoroughly annoyed that it was bagged by a newbie/ Foreigner ) .
After the boiling out/ cleaning etc, the father in law is planning to bring them over for me at Christmas.

Does anyone have any experience with bringing deer heads back into NZ from the UK. They are nice and small so should easily fit in with regular luggage, but not sure on Customs requirements....
Any help would be much appreciated.
Cheers

Hi, yes I have brought in both muntjacs and roe deer head back here. The roe deer was straight forward. The muntjacs, despite having been shot in 2005 and hanged for 15years on a wall in Europe, had the tiniest bit of brain tissue left over in the skull, and just for that I had to leave it in the hands of mpi , pay extra , like 150 to 200 $ to get it cleaned by one of their contractor. The contractor ( rentokil) at the time had just changed premises, and we’re waiting for consent from council to start their cleaning work. Long story short, it took five months to get my head back.

So make sure your heads are immaculate, declare them on arrival, they ll take them for a quick spray and that should be it. But worst case they ll get them professionally cleaned , you pay the cleaning fee and they are then courrier to you.

Cheers for that mate, sounds pretty straight forward as long as everything is clean

I’ve brought back skulls etc from USA and as above , if they are clean you shouldn’t have a problem.

Congrats on the hunt too. If I ever make it back to the UK those are the two animals I’d try and hunt.