“Big 5” African Wildlife

The “Big 5” was inspired by our month in Africa and the fierceness and uniqueness of the animals there. The "Big 5" are not only spectacular; they are considered among the most difficult to hunt. They are the: elephant, black rhino, cape buffalo, lion, and leopard.

The entire saddle is overlaid in genuine elephant leather - legally harvested in Zimbabwe. The conchos are all handmade of solid sterling silver and each one is inlaid with the back leather of Nile crocodile. The inlaid seat is a beautifully tanned belly-cut Nile crocodile leather.

Each animal portrait is an original piece of hand made leather art. We start with a oak-tanned leather that is malleable when wet. Lisa draws each animal, carves it into the leather complete with all the texturing, and then sculpts it from the back - making the portrait three-dimensional. Then plugs are made out of more leather and fit into the back to permanently hold the shape and the leather is again worked from the top to mold around the plugs. More tooling is done to accentuate the look of the animal. When the leather dries, Lisa paints in the details of the animals. The entire saddle is lined and then hand carved by Lisa.

This "Zebra Braid" on the edges is done with a piece of pure silver lacing. The cantle and horn are laced with Loren's iconic woven silver edge braid. All the animal borders and edges are lined with actual Colt 45 cartriges that are set into the leather. As in every collection saddle, we build every piece of this saddle with our own hands.

This saddle comes on its own saddle stand. Like all of our Collection Saddles, it is signed and titled on the skirt under the fender and is a rideable saddle