Dan L. Duncan Big Game Hunter

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Dan L. Duncan (1933-2010), Big Game Hunter

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Dan L. Duncan (1933-2010), Big Game Hunter

Dan L. Duncan (1933-2010) was an American born in , Texas. He was the co-founder, chairman and majority shareholder of Enterprise Products.

Duncan donated 75 million dollars to Texas Children's Hospital and the Houston Museum of Natural Science, as well as $135 million dollars to Baylor College of Medicine. Duncan donated a sculpture by Jean Dubuffet named "Monument au Fantóme", which was at first situated in front of 1100 Louisiana Street, an office building in Downtown Houston. It now resides in Discovery Green Park near the George R. Brown Convention Center.

He was a ardent dig game hunter, he owned the Double D Ranch, a 5,000-acre (20 km2) fenced hunting facility in Texas. Duncan was a Safari Club International member who has been given numerous awards for his hunting trophies. In 2006, he received the SCI World Conservation Hunting Award, which requires a hunter to have hunted on six continents, and have received SCI's 13 "Grand Slam" awards, 22 "Inner Circle" awards, the Fourth Pinnacle of Achievement Award and the Crowning Achievement Award.

Duncan has 407 entries in SCI's trophy record book, including records for killing lions, elephants, jaguars, a cheetah, rhinoceroses, polar bears, and other animals. The 1998 Weatherby Big Game Trophy was awarded to him. An avid sportman and conservationist, Duncan has hunted big game and birds on six continents, collecting an impressive 273 species and placing 282 animals in the record books. Duncan was active in numerous clubs including: Safari Club International, The Weatherby Foundation, Foundation for North American Wild Sheep, Sportsmen Conservationists of Texas.

On July 18, 2007 Duncan voluntarily appeared before a grand jury in Houston. He answered questions regarding a hunt in Russia in 2002 in which he shot and killed a moose and a wild sheep from a helicopter, which is illegal under Russian law. He admitted to his actions, but said that he did not know that his actions were illegal. His attorney said on September 12, 2007 that a grand jury had declined to bring charges against Duncan and other hunters who had been on the trip.

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Big Game Hunter Dan L. Duncan and his wife Jan

Duncan died aged 77 of a cerebral hemorrhage at his River Oaks, Houston home on March 28, 2010. He is survived by his wife Jan, son Scott and three daughters: Randa Duncan Williams, Dannine Duncan Avara and Milane Duncan Frantz. Due to an abnormality in the estate tax law for the year 2010, Duncan became the first American billionaire to pay no estate tax since its enactment. He was worth 9 billion dollars at the time of his death.


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Dan L. Duncan, 2005 Conklin Award Winner

Dan L. Duncan, 2005 Conklin Award Winner

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Dan L. Duncan (1933-2010), Big Game Hunter


Dan L. Duncan was born on January 2, 1933, in Center, Texas, to Maggie Ray and James Duncan. It did not take long for Dan’s father to start him in what would become a highly successful hunting career. At the age of seven, Dan began accompanying his father on hunts to East Texas for small and large game.

After graduating from Massey Business College with degrees in accounting and finance, Dan studied the same subjects for three more years at South Texas College. With a solid business education behind him, Dan Duncan began his career in the energy industry in 1957 and has remained highly active in that industry.

In 1968, Dan Duncan and his partners started Enterprise Products Company. Later, Dan bought out his partners and built the company into one of the premier midstream energy businesses, with gas processing plants, fractionators, propylene splitters, underground storage facilities, and pipelines throughout the Gulf Coast and Midwestern areas of the United States. In 1998, he formed Enterprise Products Partners L.P., which went public as a midstream energy partnership. Today, the company’s partnership units are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, with a market capitalization of approximately $9 billion. The company has assets in excess of $12 billion and is the 336th largest company on the Fortune 500.

Dan Duncan is best described by two words- determined and compassionate. A visionary in the energy industry, Dan has also used his vision and resources to enjoy and promote hunting and conservation.

In 1970, Dan Duncan started hunting farther from home with an elk hunt in New Mexico. It wasn’t long before his hunting travels took him all over the North American continent where he has taken the North American 29. Dan’s North American collection includes a great Rocky Mountain bighorn, a 172 Boone and Crockett desert bighorn, two polar bears, three Alaskan brown bears, five muskox, Central American whitetail, and both species of brocket deer from the Yucatan. Dan has ten species that qualify for the Boone and Crockett Record Book and considers his Grand Slam of North American rams as his toughest hunting accomplishment.

During the early seventies, Dan Duncan also took his first trip to Africa, a continent on which he has now hunted more than forty times. Dan has hunted Africa on a scale that few, if any, others could ever claim. He has twelve or more free-ranging lions, leopards, and savannah elephants. He has more than four dozen Cape buffalo and has completed the African Big Five an amazing four times. Dan has both species of rhinoceros, three western bongo (one without the use of dogs), all eight of the spiral-horned antelope, and an unbelievable ten forest duiker species.

Some of the more rare and tougher species that Dan Duncan has taken include the Lord Derby eland, mountain nyala, two aoudad from Chad, giant forest hog, forest elephant, yellow backed duiker, western greater kudu, all of the sitatungas, and all but one of the buffalos and bushbucks. There is no finer or more complete collection of African species than the collection amassed by Dan Duncan.

Dan has also hunted extensively throughout Europe and Asia. In Europe, he has taken every available mountain species, which includes eleven different species of goat, ibex, and chamois. In Asia, some highlights include his Eastern and Western tur, Siberian, Gobi, and mid Asian ibex, Kamchatka brown bear, Chukotka moose, Maral stag, mid Eastern red deer, Siberian roe deer, and Sichuan takin. He has taken the Tibetan blue sheep, the Transcaspian Urial sheep, Marco Polo, Altai, and Gobi argalis, as well as the Kamchatka, Okhostk, and Koryak snow sheep.

In the South Pacific, Dan Duncan has taken two free-ranging banteng as well as New Zealand tahr and chamois. He has also taken the extremely tough free-range whitetailed deer in the thick forest of this environment.

In total, Dan Duncan has taken twenty-four sheep of eighteen different species giving him the Ovis World Slam with only two more species needed for the Super 20 level. He also has the Capra World Slam with eighteen different species and needs only two more for the Super 20.

Possibly the only thing more amazing than Dan Duncan’s hunting accomplishments is his generous contributions to conservation and the preservation of hunting rights. Dan Duncan is a life member of eleven pro-hunting conservation organizations with additional memberships in seventeen others. His record for philanthropy is without equal. With regards to philanthropy, Dan feels that he is just doing his part. Dan’s donations include Ducks Unlimited, being the major underwriter for the Boy Scouts of America Camp Strake Nature/Visitor Center, The Houston Safari Club, and being a major contributor to the Safari Club International jaguar program with the University of Mexico.

Dan also has a soft spot for underprivileged youths and donates substantial amounts to activities that get these children introduced to the outdoor sports of hunting and fishing. His five thousand acre Double “D” Ranch has hosted more than five hundred first time hunters with nearly half of these novices being children.

Over the years, the Double “D” Ranch has been involved in several charitable projects. One project is that of hosting and participating in Operation Orphans. Operation Orphans allows children from local children’s homes to actually experience outdoor shooting sports at the ranch and to learn the keys to hunter safety and game management. The ranch also annually donates tons of game meat to local orphanages and churches.

Another unique program on the Double “D” Ranch is the annual Game Warden’s Appreciation Hunt. Game wardens and their wives are invited to the Double “D” Ranch from the surrounding areas to enjoy a few days of bird hunting and fishing and to congratulate them for a job well done in their support of wildlife conservation and law enforcement.

The Double “D” Ranch also donates various hunting and fishing trips to help support the efforts of conservation organizations such as the Houston Safari Club, Texas Game Wardens’ Association, Quail Unlimited, and Ducks Unlimited.

Dan Duncan has earned many of the most prestigious hunting and conservation awards that exist today. Among these accomplishments are SCI’s World Hunting Award Ring in 1997, SCI’s International Hunting Award in 1998, and the Weatherby Hunting and Conservation Award in 1999. Dan L. Duncan is indeed a “tough guy” with a big heart, and a worthy recipient of the 2005 Conklin Award.
 
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Legacy for One Billionaire: Death, but No Taxes
by David Kocieniewski, June 8, 2010

A Texas pipeline tycoon who died two months ago may become the first American billionaire allowed to pass his fortune to his children and grandchildren tax-free.

Dan L. Duncan, a soft-spoken farm boy who started with $10,000 and two propane trucks, and built a network of natural gas processing plants and pipelines that made him the richest person in Houston, died in late March of a brain hemorrhage at 77.

Had his life ended three months earlier, Mr. Duncan’s riches — Forbes magazine estimated his worth at $9 billion, ranking him as the 74th wealthiest in the world — would have been subject to a federal tax of at least 45 percent. If he had lived past Jan. 1, 2011, the rate would be even higher — 55 percent.

Instead, because Congress allowed the tax to lapse for one year and gave all estates a free pass in 2010, Mr. Duncan’s four children and four grandchildren stand to collect billions that in any other year would have gone to the Treasury.

The United States enacted an estate tax in 1916, and when John D. Rockefeller, America’s first billionaire, died in 1937, his estate paid 70 percent. Since then, the rates have fluctuated, but this is the first time the tax has been repealed altogether.

The bonanza in tax savings for Mr. Duncan’s descendants is sure to be unsettling to those who have paid estate taxes on more modest wealth — until Jan. 1 of this year, it applied to any estate valued at more than $3.5 million, taxing only the money exceeding that threshold, or $7 million for a couple’s estate.

Although the tax affects only about 5,500 estates a year, it is such an incendiary issue that when Congress unexpectedly let it lapse at the end of 2009, financial advisers warned that it might play a macabre factor in the end-of-life decisions being weighed by heirs of elderly Americans. Some estate lawyers worried that tax considerations might prompt their clients to keep an ill relative on life support through the end of 2009 to get the favorable treatment — or worse, resist life-prolonging measures to hasten a relative’s demise before the end of 2010.

The one-year lapse in the estate tax was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2001, an accounting quirk in his package of tax cuts. Although Democrats pledged to close that gap and reinstate a tax for 2010 when they took control of Congress, they failed to reach an agreement last December. The Senate Finance Committee is now trying to forge a compromise that would reinstate the tax, but even if that effort succeeds, it is unclear whether any changes might be retroactive and applied to those who have died so far in 2010.

Many lawyers say Mr. Duncan’s heirs have the means and motivation to wage a fierce court battle to challenge the constitutionality of any retroactive tax.

Representatives of Mr. Duncan’s family, his estate and his business interests did not return calls about the matter. Mr. Duncan’s will, which is on file at the Harris County Probate Court in Houston, was written in 2006 and amended in 2008, a time when most estate planners assumed that Congress would not allow the tax to lapse. Federal law has long allowed an unlimited amount of assets to pass untaxed to a surviving spouse, and Mr. Duncan left his home and ranch to his wife of more than 20 years, Jan, along with stock valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

But the bulk of his estate is left to his children and grandchildren, and would have been taxable in 2009 or 2011.

In addition to personal effects bequeathed to his descendants — boats, jewelry, automobiles, shotguns and a 5,500-acre Texas hunting ranch stocked with wild game — he passed on his holdings in EPCO and Dan Duncan L.L.P., two entities in the natural gas and pipeline empire he built. The stock involved includes more than 100 million shares in Enterprise GP Holdings, which closed at $43.23 the last trading day before Mr. Duncan died. That asset alone could have resulted in a $2 billion estate tax.

The Treasury collected more than $25 billion in estate taxes in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available.

Elaborate estate plans with sophisticated trusts are often made many years before death to reduce estate taxes owed by the richest.

Advocates of the tax say it is unconscionable that Congressional leaders have allowed the richest Americans to reap a new tax break at a time when deficits are soaring and the income gap between wealthy and poor citizens remains near historic levels.

“The ultrawealthy in this country will still be able to pass on enormous wealth to the next generation,” said Chuck Collins, who studies income inequality and has worked with billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates to promote an estate tax. Mr. Collins argues that the tax is a “recycling program for economic opportunity.”

But opponents, who label it a death tax, say it is unfair because it taxes the same income twice — once when it is earned and again when it is passed on to heirs.

Mr. Duncan’s eldest daughter, Randa Duncan Williams, is serving as executor of the estate and is a voting member of the family trust that will now control her father’s interest in Enterprise GP Holdings.

Should the family trust sell these inherited shares, capital gains taxes would presumably be owed on the difference between Mr. Duncan’s original cost, which could be quite low, and their market value when sold. Capital gains taxes are capped at 15 percent.

Ms. Williams, who has served as a director and general partner at the family’s energy businesses for years, was deeply involved in her father’s philanthropic efforts and is expected to continue much of that charitable work.

During his life, Mr. Duncan contributed to a wide assortment of wildlife foundations and community institutions like the Houston Zoo and Houston Museum of Science, and an assortment of medical institutions. The various medical centers at Baylor College of Medicine received more than $250 million from Mr. Duncan and his wife, with more than $100 million used to found the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center.

Mr. Duncan’s will designates a handful of nonprofit groups and charitable foundations that will receive donations, all of which would have been tax-exempt even in years when the estate tax was in effect.

An avid big game hunter — Mr. Duncan has more than 500 entries in the Safari Club International record book for killing animals including polar bears, rhinoceroses, bighorn sheep, lions and elephants — he made a $1 million donation in his will to the Shikar Safari Club International Foundation.

The will also directs that any money or assets not otherwise specified for a relative or charity be deposited into two family charitable trusts, which can be used to donate to causes deemed worthy by his heirs.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 14, 2010
An article on Wednesday about Dan L. Duncan, who may become the first American billionaire to pass his fortune to his heirs tax-free, misidentified the institution to which he gave more than $250 million during his lifetime. It is the Baylor College of Medicine, not Baylor University. (The two have been distinct entities for several decades.)


Source: NYTimes.com
 
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