Best Port to Buy tanned animal skins

[FranknBeans]

We will be in Juneau, Ketchikan and Skagway. Thanks in advance

 

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Edited March 31, 2019 by FranknBeans
addition

[wolfie11]

What are you looking for?  It’s possible to buy tanned moose and caribou but you have to look for it.  Many of the fur shops will sell furs such as fox or beaver.  

[sherryf]

There's a taxidermy shop with furs/hides in downtown Ketchikan. It might be Tall Tale Taxidermy. My husband always likes to look around in there, but we've never bought anything.

[quack2]

Barrow.

[martincath]

Since you're a fellow Canuck OP, it'll definitely be easier to buy your furs in-country (no need to worry about CITES certification when bringing animal bits over the border that way...) and most likely also cheaper, since AK ports are not geared toward value shopping but toward making an entire year's income out of tourists who are only there for about six months! If you didn't hunt it yourself I can't see you having any emotional connection to a particular hide, so it's just a simple economic decision - while US pricing on most stuff usually beats Canadian, AK pricing on pretty much anything you can acquire elsewhere does not. If it were an artisanal product in a particular local native style there may not be a close equivalent - but an animal skin is an animal skin, and they don't care about borders so unless someone is selling Walrus hide you can get the same beasties over here!

 

You may assume that if you stick to an obvious animal that is not endangered you'll have no problem re: certification, but you'd be wrong. As a Scot and kilt-wearer I've stopped taking my sealskin sporran out of Canada because of the grief I got the first time I did so on the way home - somewhat ironic, since I bought it in Scotland but it was Canadian-made as the tag on it confirmed. CBSA are within their rights to confiscate an item and force you to prove it is legal rather than the other way around.

[FranknBeans]

On 4/1/2019 at 12:57 PM, martincath said:

Since you're a fellow Canuck OP, it'll definitely be easier to buy your furs in-country (no need to worry about CITES certification when bringing animal bits over the border that way...) and most likely also cheaper, since AK ports are not geared toward value shopping but toward making an entire year's income out of tourists who are only there for about six months! If you didn't hunt it yourself I can't see you having any emotional connection to a particular hide, so it's just a simple economic decision - while US pricing on most stuff usually beats Canadian, AK pricing on pretty much anything you can acquire elsewhere does not. If it were an artisanal product in a particular local native style there may not be a close equivalent - but an animal skin is an animal skin, and they don't care about borders so unless someone is selling Walrus hide you can get the same beasties over here!

 

You may assume that if you stick to an obvious animal that is not endangered you'll have no problem re: certification, but you'd be wrong. As a Scot and kilt-wearer I've stopped taking my sealskin sporran out of Canada because of the grief I got the first time I did so on the way home - somewhat ironic, since I bought it in Scotland but it was Canadian-made as the tag on it confirmed. CBSA are within their rights to confiscate an item and force you to prove it is legal rather than the other way around.

Good point. Thanks