Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/128995
On oc at i o n L By Chris Dorsey O A talented wildlife sculptor and host of PBR Outdoors, Steve LeBlanc is looking forward to more expeditions with the greats of bull-riding. ne of the most exuberant personalities on outdoor television is also one of this country's finest wildlife artists. Steve LeBlanc has proven a natural fit with the hard-riding and hardliving cowboys of the Professional Bull Riders as host of Orion Entertainment's PBR Outdoors, joining them on their hunting and fishing adventures. While LeBlanc has on his own spanned the world on his outdoor quests. A talented sculptor of big game, LeBlanc considers both his love of the wild and his talent as an artist to be God given. He found his way outside first on his grandfather's farm in Kansas, and then when he was 12, his family moved to Colorado where he discovered a whole new world of elk, mule deer and pronghorns, one of his all-time favorite subjects for his artwork. After raising four children there, LeBlanc and his wife continue to make Colorado their home. Earning a degree in wildlife biology, LeBlanc honed his skill as a sculptor through taxidermy in the 1970s. His work in shaping detailed forms led to a number of national awards for his mounts. S around the world and been collected by the likes of film stars, the late President Gerald Ford and the Emperor of Japan. The key to his art is, LeBlanc says, is getting the "Magoo," the essence of the animal, which cannot be gathered from photos or even visits to zoos, but only by studying the animal in its natural habitat. There, he discovers that one moment, in a lifted head or a rippling muscle, in which the animal reveals its true self. "You have to feel it . . . smell it," says Leblanc. And that has led him on worldwide hunting and fishing expeditions, in the course of which he has taken the Grand Slam of wild sheep and the Big Five of Africa and most everything else in between. LeBlanc has S tevefallow deer tohunted everything from elephants and other animals in Africa's Big Five. Then one day some of his clients, Texas ranch owners, expressed to LeBlanc their interest in having life-sized bronzes of wildlife for their properties. LeBlanc had to teach himself a whole new artform, visiting foundries to learn all he could about casting bronze statues. Since then his award-winning art, including such signature pieces as Lion of Judah and I'm the Boss, has been displayed P O R T I N G C 160 L A S S I R ecently back from hunting elephant, LeBlanc talks about how valuable it is for an artist to be able to see, on the hoof as it were, every crease, fold and wrinkle of a big tusker's trunk, face and ears up close and very, very personal. LeBlanc is also an avid angler and a scuba diver, which has plunged him into the underwater C S