The stuff... of dreams

For on a bench in his workshop stands a prime specimen of the muscular American big cat, looking like a small lioness, large and completely lifelike.

The cat was shot in British Columbia by one of Paul's clients in Somerset - and it's a tribute to Paul's skill in his trade that he's managed to preserve the skin and stretch it over a mould to capture exactly the mountain lion's appearance in life.

But although it's taken many weeks of hard labour, that's nothing compared to the size of one of Paul's next projects - an eight-and-a-half foot polar bear.

Paul mainly specialises in traditional trophy heads - of deer and moose - as well as plenty of birds and fish, but just occasionally he gets asked to stuff something a little more unusual.

"The polar bear will be the biggest animal I've had to work with yet," says Paul.

"My client is not totally sure at the moment if he'd like a rug on the floor or a stuffed one, but either way the skin is going to be fully tanned by a taxidermist in the USA and will be sent to me in a ready state for mounting onto a model.

"He's got a large house in Wiltshire and he says he's got a place for it. His idea is to have it standing on all fours."

Paul's client is looking at a £6,000 bill if he wants the bear looking as it did when he shot it while living on the ice in Alaska for two weeks with the natives.

However, not all taxidermy is so expensive. A roe or muntjac deer trophy head will set you back £230, while a cape buffalo head costs £1,000, and for the cougar Paul is charging £1,500.

"It depends on the size and the amount of work involved," he explains. "Fish are quite expensive in comparison because they cost £15 per inch, plus the case.

"So for an 8lb brown trout in a curved glass case with gold lettering, you're looking at about £800. But there's a lot more man-hours involved because each scale has to be painted on to restore the colour, and it takes a long time to process the fish skin."

Paul certainly has no shortage of customers who are willing to pay a premium to have their prize catches preserved.

Inside a wooden shed next to his house in Tincleton, near Puddletown, two giant chest freezers line one wall - full of birds, deer heads and fish, waiting for the taxidermist's touch.

Above the freezers stand some examples of Paul's handiwork - a fox in classic pose inside a glass case, two snowy white barn owls mounted on the wall, and a large fish with each scale intricately painted in bright greens and blues, also encased in glass.

There's a strange, quite overpowering smell in this shed, where a dusting of coarse animal hairs covers the floor around two wild boar skins from Poland which are midway through preparation for use as rugs.

To my surprise and relief, I can't detect any traces of blood or guts in here - Paul tells me the shed is only for "finishing work like painting and casing up specimens" anyway - but I'm glad when he leads me outside and through to his workshop.

The real taxidermy work actually takes place in this building, where practically every inch of one wall is covered in mounted deer, moose and buffalo heads.

Again there are animal hairs lying all over the floor and the work benches, but again no sign of anything that might make me feel a bit squeamish.

"People often say taxidermy is all blood, guts and gore, but it's not. I'm only taking the skin off and then preserving the skin - I'm not delving into any guts," says Paul, showing me the preserved skin of a deer.

On one side the fur is beautifully soft, while on the underneath the skin is smooth, like a leather coat.

Paul says: "Once I've taken the skin off and preserved it, all you're left with is the skin with hair on it - once that's pickled, tanned and oiled, it's just a piece of leather."

The second stage of creating a piece of taxidermy is to make a mould of the animal or its head out of polyurethane foam - or sometimes papier mache - and then glue and stitch the skin over the top.

Paul has invested many hours in studying books and photographs to ensure he gets every detail of each creature's anatomy exactly right.

While we're talking in the workshop - standing alongside the 3ft cougar which is almost completed - the phone rings and Paul's wife Bryony enters to tell him "it's Marco on the line".

That's Marco Pierre White - celebrity chef and owner of a string of top London restaurants, including the Criterion and Quo Vadis - who is fishing nearby and wants to speak to Paul about his hunting trophies.

"I've done some roe heads and other stalking trophies for him," explains Paul when he returns from his phone call.

"He loves fishing and hunting. I do his deer but he gives his fish to another taxidermist."

Not all of Paul's work results from hunting - the remainder of the animals and birds he deals with have either been killed on the roads or simply been discovered in the countryside, having died of natural causes.

"When they're driving around people often find things on the road, like a dead owl, and they think it's a shame to leave it there and wonder if they can have it stuffed. So they look in Yellow Pages, see my name and give me a call.

"If anybody brings me something I have to make sure in my own mind it's been legally acquired - either it's a road casualty, it's died of natural causes or it's been hunted legally," says Paul.

"Neither I nor any of the other members of the Guild of Taxidermists would want to support any trade in illegal animals - there's no future in that."

One area of work Paul has resisted entering into is domestic pets, despite getting lots of enquiries from grieving dog and cat owners.

"If somebody has had an animal close to them for a long time, they knew that animal intimately in life and to try to reproduce that is nigh on impossible for me," explains Paul. "There are taxidermists who are very skilled and will do pets, but it's fraught with disaster. I can just imagine doing a dog for somebody and them coming to pick it up and saying 'it doesn't look anything like how I remember Barney'."

As one of only two registered taxidermists in Dorset (the other is 29-year-old Claire Fowler from Weymouth) - and one of only about 25 full-time registered taxidermists in the country - it's hardly surprising Paul is being kept extremely busy.

And having stuffed everything from a wallaby to a cougar - and won many awards - he's certainly come a long way since his very first attempt at taxidermy at the tender age of ten.

"When I was at school I became interested by the antique stuffed birds I saw somewhere - how they were done and what made them stand up in a case without falling over.

"Then one day I remember making my father turn the car around so we could go and pick up a dead blackbird from the road," recalls Paul.

"I got a book from the library and tried to skin the bird and preserve the skin. My dad was very encouraging, but I think my parents thought at that stage it was just a flash in the pan interest."

However, Paul kept up his "hobby" until his teenage years, when he was taken on as a taxidermist by Hampshire Museum Services, and today he works independently.

"My mother has always spoken about me getting a proper job rather than doing something like this, but I enjoy what I do," he says.

"I like meeting the people who come to see us and travelling around the country to deliver some of the items because they're quite delicate.

"In the last eight years business has increased so much that I can rely on it totally."