Outdoors come inside

Standing two feet from a six-ton elephant, my adrenaline started to pump and my heart began to race.

It's head was larger then my car's engine and I was the size of one of its legs. It was intimidating to say the least.

Next to it, a bear was showing its pearly whites and a cheetah was looking at me like I was going to be lunch.

Good thing the beasts weren't alive anymore. Shawn Andres took care of the elephant in 2006 during one of his African hunting trips and now it stands in the showroom of Alpine Artistry, Andres' taxidermy business in Arlee.

Andres has perfected the art of taking the creatures of the outdoors and outfitting them for the indoors. Along with his busy business, Andres is an avid outsdoorsman.

Andres traveled to Africa four times, to South Africa, Cameroon, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, where he shot the elephant.

In Cameroon, he was able to see pygmies, among other things.

"It was really a cool hunt because we saw gorillas and chimpanzees and the rain forest," he said. "We weren't successful, sometimes you get skunked, but hunting is hunting. It was really a cool hunt."

Andres tracked the elephant and used a 378 Weatherby to take it down because it's what he uses when he guides bears.

"Most guys use a bigger, heavier caliber than that," he said. "It was ample."

From 28 yards, Andres pulled the trigger.

"If it's a trophy animal, you try either making a brain shot or a heart shot," he said.

The day of the kill was exactly one year, to the day, that his guide's best friend was killed by an elephant during a hunt.

"It was kind of a big medicine day," he said. "I remember that morning, we talked about that whole thing. We took a moment of thought before we went. It was kind of a big deal."

Andres has also shot a lion in Tanzania in 2003 and alligators in Lake Okeechobee, Fla., that were twice as tall as he is.

Out of everything, the elephant was the biggest deal for Andres, who is unsure of exactly how big it is.

"I don't know [how big it is]," he said. "Did they say 11 tons, is that right? Six tons? Once it gets that big, it's hard to tell. It's big."

The trophy fee is $12,000, paid to the government before being dispersed back to the community in forms of inoculation and anti-poaching campaigns while the elephant meat is given to the people.

"After you shoot an elephant, you'll go back to the village and there will just be lines and lines and strings of meat hanging, drying the meat," he said. "After you leave the kill of an elephant, there's nothing more than a wet-spot on the ground. They take every bit of meat with. It's quite a bit a good program. To know that, it's kind of a big deal."

The beast was prepared, salted and dried before being shipped back to the United States. Andres sent it to a local tannery before stuffing it. It took four men five weeks, close to 1000 man hours, to finish the statue.

The team sculpted and made the form from scratch. The leg forms were made from chicken wire and fiberglass as the team built everything up from there.

Employee Josh West said the elephant was one of the toughest projects he has worked on because it started from scratch.

"We had to build everyone," he said. "There was no form."

Andres got into taxidermy after one of his father's hunting trips. In 1978, his father went on a trip to the Yukon and brought back a grizzly bear, moose and caribou. Andres went to the taxidermy shop and thought it was cool. He asked for a job and started out at the bottom.

"I was just a young boy then, so I started sweeping floors and hauling garbage and skinning," he said.

He worked there for many years before attending college but working at another shop part-time.

"It's all I've ever done," he said. "It's all I ever want to do."

In 1991, Andres opened up his own taxidermy business outside of Arlee.

"Everyone wants to float their own boat," he said.

Alpine Artistry does a lot of high-end show pieces, but also do many basic shoulder mounts. Andres said they used to do a lot more local work, but the predation of wolves has decreased the deer and elk numbers coming in.

"They've dropped 80 percent," he said. "It was pretty much across the board. We used to do 75 whitetails a year from Sula to Libby, from Trout Creek to Philipsburg. This year, we probably got seven in. We used to do a dozen elk from the East Fork to the Bitterroot, a dozen from Idaho, a dozen out of the Bob Marshall. This year, we'll probably do three. Those numbers have really declined because of the wolf."

Andres has been able to sustain his business by doing more African and exotic animals and expanding business across state lines. Currently, Alpine Artistry has drop zones in Alaska for brown bears to be mounted.

The most difficult part of stuffing is getting the animal to look life-like, getting the right attitude and adding facial features and expressions.

"It's kind of what the customer wants and what the hide tells us it's going to do," Andres said. "We're artists, but we're working with a different kind of medium. We're bringing back to life and showing respect to these animals and trying to make them as life-like as possible."

West said the first 1,000 animals a taxidermist does will be the hardest, but it gets easier the more experience one gets.

"The skin will basically tell you what you can do with the animal," he said.

West, along with Andres, got into taxidermy at a younger age.

"I decided if I could make money doing what I love, than why not?" he said.

The most rewarding part of the job is the finished product and letting the customer see the outcome.

"I can call people up and tell them, ‘Your work is completed. You owe us $500,' and they're all excited about coming back and paying their bill and getting their trophy," he said. "They're elated to get their stuff back. If I work as a mechanic and call somebody up and say, ‘Your brakes are finished, you owe me $500 to fix your brake,' nobody's that excited about it. There's a lot of warm fuzzies and a lot of reward that way."

Andres said he will continue to hunt, although going out with his kids is a bigger reward than shooting any animal will bring. However, he said there are still a couple elusive animals he would like to track, including sheep in Russia and Siberia.

"There are several animals in Africa that I would like to hunt," he said. "I would have liked to hunt a polar bear before that was closed. More than anything, I get a reward from going out with my kids. I don't really have to shoot anything in Montana ever again if I can go with my kids."