July 9, 2026

RCMP Non-Resident Firearm Declaration: A Guide for Canadian Hunting Outfitters

Every fall, a US client of yours packs a rifle, drives north, and hits a Canadian border crossing. What happens in the next twenty minutes at that booth decides whether your hunt starts on time or starts with a phone call from a frustrated hunter stuck in secondary inspection.

If you outfit for non-resident hunters in Canada, the firearm side of the border crossing is squarely your problem — not because you fill out the form for them (you cannot), but because you are the one who told them the hunt was possible, and you are the one whose reputation takes the hit when a client shows up unprepared. The good news: the process is simple, it is cheap, and it is completely predictable once you know it. The bad news: almost nobody explains it to clients until they are already standing at the booth.

This guide walks through the current Non-Resident Firearm Declaration process, what it costs, how long it lasts, what your client has to bring, and the handful of mistakes that turn a five-minute stop into an hour-long headache. I built Hunt Outfitter partly because this kind of cross-border detail is exactly what falls through the cracks when you are running a season out of a spreadsheet and your inbox.

What the declaration actually is

A non-resident who wants to bring a firearm into Canada temporarily — for a hunt, a competition, whatever — does not need a Canadian firearms licence. Instead, they complete the Non-Resident Firearm Declaration, form RCMP 5589. Once a Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officer confirms it at the port of entry, the declaration acts as a temporary firearms licence and a temporary registration certificate for the firearms listed on it.

Two things make this the outfitter's business:

1. It is separate from every hunting licence and tag. Your client can have every provincial licence, draw result, and species tag in perfect order and still get turned around at the border over the firearm. The declaration lives entirely on the federal firearms side.
2. It is your client's single point of failure on arrival day. A hunter who has never crossed with a gun before does not know this form exists. If the first time they hear “RCMP 5589” is from a border officer, you have already lost time you did not have.

The numbers you need to know

Here are the current, verified figures. Confirm them yourself before every season — fees and forms do change — but as of this writing:

A few things worth pulling out of that table:

• The $25 is per declaration, not per firearm. A hunter listing three rifles pays the same $25 as a hunter listing one.
• The 60 days is generous for a single hunt but not infinite. A client who crosses early for a scouting trip and comes back for the hunt needs to watch the clock — although a confirmed NRFD can cover repeated entries of the same listed firearms within that 60-day window at no additional fee.
• If your client wants to borrow a firearm once they are in Canada rather than bring their own, that is a different document entirely: the Non-Resident Temporary Borrowing Licence (CAN $30, 60 days), which requires a sponsor associated with the activity — and an outfitter can be that sponsor. Applicants can apply for the borrowing licence through the MyCFP portal.

The step-by-step process

Here is the sequence I give every non-resident client, start to finish.

1. Download form RCMP 5589 ahead of time. It is available from the RCMP site and at the border, but nobody does their best paperwork standing at a booth with a line behind them. Fill it out at the kitchen table.
2. Fill in every firearm's details — type, make, model, calibre or gauge, and serial number. Have the serial numbers written down, not memorized. (More on the fields below.)
3. Do NOT sign it. This is the single most important instruction. The declaration must be signed in front of the CBSA officer, who witnesses the signature. A form signed in advance at home is invalid and has to be redone.
4. Bring more than one gun? Use the continuation sheet (RCMP 5590). Grab it at the same time you grab the 5589 — do not assume you can pile everything onto one form.
5. Arrive at the border with the firearm(s), the completed-but-unsigned form, photo ID, and CAN $25. Declare the firearm to the officer. Do not try to be casual about it — you are legally required to declare, and an undeclared firearm can be seized.
6. The officer confirms the declaration, witnesses the signature, and collects the fee. You now hold a temporary licence valid for 60 days.
7. Keep the confirmed declaration on you in the field.A conservation officer or CBSA can ask to see it. “It's back at the lodge” is not a great answer in the field.

That is the entire process. It is not complicated. It just has to be done in the right order — and steps 3 and 5 are where clients trip.

Flying in? Build in a connection buffer

Most of this guide pictures a client driving to the border, because that is still how a lot of non-resident hunters arrive. But plenty fly in — and flying changes the risk in one important way that is worth a dedicated warning to every air-travel client.

When a hunter drives up, a slow border stop costs them minutes, maybe an hour. Annoying, but the hunt still starts on time. When a hunter flies into Canada with a rifle, the exact same paperwork happens — the firearm is declared and the NRFD confirmed by a CBSA officer at the first Canadian airport they land in — except now it all sits inside a tight connection window. On an international arrival, your client typically has to clear customs, confirm the declaration, collect their checked bags including the firearm, and re-check everything for the connecting domestic flight. Every one of those steps takes time, and every one can hiccup.

Here is what turns an inconvenience into a lost hunting day: if the firearm misses the connection — or the client does — you are not out an hour, you are out a day or more. A rifle pulled for extra screening, or a gun case that does not make a tight transfer, can end up on the next day's flight. Now your hunter is stuck in an airport hotel while opening morning happens without them — on a hunt they paid thousands of dollars for.

So the single best piece of advice you can give a fly-in client: leave a generous buffer between the international arrival and the connecting flight — three hours is a solid target. Walk through everything that has to go right otherwise. What if the inbound flight leaves late? What if the customs hall is backed up? What if the declaration takes longer than the five minutes it should? A three-hour cushion absorbs all of it and keeps the hunt on schedule. A fifty-minute “legal” connection does not — it looks fine right up until the one time it isn't, and that one time costs a day.

Tell them to book it that way from the start. It is far, far easier to build the buffer into the itinerary up front than to rebook a missed connection with a firearm in the mix.

What information goes on the form

For each firearm, the declaration captures the identifying details. Broadly, that is:

• Firearm type (rifle, shotgun, etc.)
• Make and model
• Calibre or gauge
• Serial number
• Barrel length (relevant to how the firearm is classified)

Note that the NRFD covers non-restricted firearms for legitimate purposes like hunting. Handguns and other restricted firearms carry additional requirements and an Authorization to Transport, and are a different conversation — if a client asks about bringing a handgun for a hunt, send them straight to the RCMP and CBSA before you say anything definitive.

One more current detail worth knowing: as of September 1, 2024, changes to the rules on importing ammunition and firearm partscame into force. In practice, a non-resident with a confirmed NRFD can buy ammunition in Canada for the firearms listed on the declaration. Verify the specifics for your client's situation, but it means your hunters generally do not need to haul every box of shells across the border.

The five mistakes that cost your clients time

After enough seasons you see the same failures over and over. Warn every client about these:

1. Signing the form in advance. Feels efficient, invalidates the form. The signature is witnessed at the border, full stop.
2. Not knowing the form exists at all. The client who learns about RCMP 5589 from the officer is the client who holds up the line and starts the hunt flustered.
3. Serial numbers “in their head.”Under pressure, memory fails. Written down, ideally with a photo of each firearm's serial, saves everyone.
4. One form for too many guns. No continuation sheet (5590) means a scramble at the booth.
5. Not carrying the confirmed declaration in the field. The paperwork is only useful if it is on the hunter when someone official asks.

None of these are hard to prevent. They are prevented with one clear message sent to the client well before travel — which is exactly the kind of thing that gets forgotten when you are juggling deposits, guide schedules, and a dozen other bookings.

Where this fits into running your operation

Here is the honest version of how most outfitters handle firearm details today: it lives in an email thread somewhere, or a client mentions their rifle on a phone call and you write it on a sticky note, or it simply never gets captured until the hunter shows up. That works right up until a conservation officer asks a question in the field, or until you realize the week before the hunt that you have no idea what your six incoming clients are bringing.

Hunt Outfitter captures firearm details as part of the client's booking record — on every plan, not as an upsell. For each firearm, you can record the type, make, model, calibre, bullet weight, bullet brand, barrel length, action type, an optional serial number, and a declaration status. The serial number is optional by design: you do not need to be collecting serial numbers on hunters who are not crossing a border, and you should not be storing that data unless there is a reason to. For your non-resident clients who are crossing, it is there when it matters.

I want to be very clear about one thing, because it matters and because I would rather you hear it from me than assume otherwise: Hunt Outfitter's firearm record does not replace the official RCMP 5589. It is not a filing. It does not talk to CBSA. It does not clear anyone at the border. What it does is get the details organized ahead of time — so when you send your client the “here is how the border works” message, you already have their firearm information in front of you, and so the declaration status is tracked in the same place as the rest of the booking instead of in your memory. The official form still gets completed by the client and confirmed by an officer at the port of entry. Always.

If you want to see how the firearm fields and declaration tracking fit into a booking, the fastest way is to set up a test client and look. For more on getting your whole operation season-ready, see our pre-season setup checklist. If you outfit in British Columbia specifically, our guide to BC non-resident hunting requirements covers the licensing and guide rules that sit alongside the firearm side. And if you are still weighing tools, how to choose hunting outfitter software lays out what actually matters for an operation like yours.

Hunt Outfitter is booking and client-management software built by a hunter for hunting outfitters — firearm tracking included on every plan. Start a free 14-day trial and set up your client intake, firearm fields and all, in the first hour.

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