Have you ever wanted to do something good for others on your hunting trip? Well, I might be able to suggest something that will allow you to do good for others and make you feel good at the same time! My husband Ken and I were planning a hunt in South Africa last year. We had heard about the Bell Family Blue Bag Program, but weren’t really sure how to go about delivering a Blue Bag on our trip.

We contacted Brandon Jurries, who oversees the Blue Bag program for the Mid-Michigan Chapter. He put together two Blue Bags that we could take with us to South Africa on our hunt. The bags contained all sorts of school supplies (and some soccer balls for fun!) to assist a school in providing the items to their students. We contacted our outfitter – Peiter Viviers of Marupa Safaris, to find us a school that could really use the supplies.

We thought we would be able to take two Blue Bags, since we had only our guns and our clothing, leaving two checked bags available for use (two checked bags are allowed for each person on international flights). However, before we left, Ken decided to take his new crossbow along, leaving us with only one available checked bag. In order to still be able to take both Blue Bags, we combined the items into one bag (and put some in with our clothing), and were able to stay within our allowed two checked bags each.

We found out later that some airlines will allow the bags without counting them against your two checked bag limit, but you must contact your airline about a month in advance of travel to get the excess baggage fees waived, with each airline having varying policies. The airline will need to attach a note to your reservation, stating the fees will not be collected at the time of departure due to the humanitarian and not-for-resale contents of the bag. When traveling with a Blue Bag, it’s a good idea to include a printed inventory of the contents, intended destination and a letter from SCIF describing the Blue Bag program and its contents.

When we arrived in South Africa, we went through the items for the Blue Bags, and re-distributed them into the two bags. Now we were ready to plan our visit to the school. Pieter and I took a day off from hunting and travelled to the Laerskool Drakensig Primary School to deliver the Blue Bags. This was an elementary school with all of the children wearing uniforms. Many of the children were barefoot. They were happy to see us and were very excited about the school supplies. As you can see from the photos, they were proud of their new supplies. It gave me a good feeling to see that we were able to do even a little bit to help the school in providing some supplies for their students.

If you have a hunting trip planned in the future, no matter where, you too can take Blue Bags with you to help the local community. Contact Brandon Jurries at bjuuries44@gmail.com. You can also find more information about the program on the SCI website at http://safariclubfoundation.org/bell-family-blue-bag-program/ or contact Karen Crehan at kcrehan@safariclub.org.