My oldest (proper person) wants to borrow my 870 for a quail hunt in Texas. I’m a Hoosier. I understand I can ship directly to his local FFL. Is that it? Any specific carrier? Overnight? Where can I find this info?
First things first, contact the ffl he wants to use, make sure you understand what he (the dealer) wants, not every dealer will accept a transfer from a non ffl holder! And if you do something wrong your gun goes into limbo, can’t be transferred to your son, and can’t be shipped back to you!
Just my thought, by the time you pay shipping to him (if you ship it, I highly recommend a priority service like next day air or second day, that keeps less hands on it, plus the people are actually employees of ups or fed ex, fed ex ground service hire any warm body, ex con or person on probation that applies for a job!) and shipping back to you (if you want it back), you might be better off sending him some cash, and letting him buy his own shotgun
For what it's worth, IMHO if you're going to ship the gun to him, get his FFL info and see if your FFL of choice will ship it for you. There's less chance of the gun getting stuck in limbo.
Also, I've heard that some carrier's won't accept a firearm to be shipped from a non FFL.
I had people at the UPS store hassle me about shipping a shotgun stock. They really didn't want to accept it because I wasn't an FFL, but finally the store manager accepted it.