PHIL Leggett is a brilliant taxidermist -- but talk to him about stuffed animals and his hackles begin to rise.

As if it were a personal insult, he said: "Animals were stuffed by the Victorians.

"Taxidermy is an art form -- it is sculpture. Animals are not stuffed with sawdust any more."

The steely eyes tell you that he means what he says. And you don't argue with a man who knows his business inside out, so to speak.

It began as a hobby borne of his interest in nature when he was aged 10.

Over the years, he has perfected the art, earning the acclaim of everyone who sets eyes on his work.

Phil, now 35, of Hough Fold Way, Harwood has worked for people in Britain and abroad and it can be seen in museums, stately homes and educational centres.

Just a few minutes in his workshop illustrates why he gets so brassed off with all the puns the mere mention of taxidermy attracts.

His art has become hi-tech precision, using modern materials like silicone gel, fibreglass and modern synthetic chemicals which do not harm the environment.

Phil is an expert sculptor and artist and his first task when someone takes a bird, fish or mammal to him is to make sketches and take precise measurements.

His working plans look like engineering drawings and can take many hours of work before he moves to the next stages. They look good enough to hang on the wall.

He spends many more hours -- sometimes weeks and months -- creating a perfect model of the creature he is preserving in the pose the customer wants. Only then is the preserved skin added.

That is where Phil's many years studying nature in all its wild forms come in.

He knows instinctively how a bounding deer lands, how a leaping perch enters the water and how a badger looks as it seeks the worms.

There may be no such thing as reincarnation but Phil comes pretty close to achieving it.

His birds of prey look menacing and alive, his vixen could attract a mate.

Around 90 per cent of the work he does is private and the great majority of that comes from road kills and other accidents like sparrowhawks flying into patio windows.

He said: "I used to go to country fairs but now I don't need to because the work comes to me."

Most of his current work is fish or animals hit by vehicles.

But he's also working on a Manchester family's much-loved St Bernard dog.

Over the years, he has preserved everything from pigmy shrews and tarantulas to pike and parrots.

He also preserved Oscar, the world's oldest piranha fish, for Bolton Museum.

But he has recently done unusual commissions such as turning a family's lionskin rug into a lifelike roaring beast that would scare the pants off any intruder.

Many Bolton people have probably seen Phil's "other" work without realising it.

He is a man of many parts. Although taxidermy is his main job, he also works part time as a display technician at Bolton Museum.

And he created the dinosaur's open mouth that people walk through as they enter the Jurassic exhibition.