Ten feet of Kenyan Savannah separated Jim Mills from the charging leopard. A couple of bounds for the beast - a couple of seconds for Mills - was all that stood between him and bloody death.

He had no time to think about the claws piercing his skin or about his wife.

He had no time to grab the rifle he knew he should use.

He could only react.

Mills hoisted the shotgun.

"It's lucky for me leopards are thin-skinned and fold up pretty easy," said the man whose trophy mounts fill the Safari Club in the Thermopolis Holiday Inn. Yes, that Holiday Inn with the catchy jingle about a rhinoceros.

Mills has owned the hotel since 1978. He is how Thermopolis got its rhinoceros - and its lions, tigers and bears. And its elk, deer, zebra, alligator, elephant, mid-Asian Ibex and water buffalo, just to name a few trophies in the collection.

"Someone asked me once, 'Jim, what do you do at the Holiday Inn?' I looked at him and said, 'I keep the walls filled.'"

Mills turns 75 on Tuesday. In the last 50 years of his life, he has been on 21 African safaris and countless other hunts in Asia, Australia, Canada, Alaska, South America and Europe. He also loves hunting the game right out his backdoor in Wyoming.

Those walls he fills in the lobby, restaurant and lounge contain not only his trophy mounts, but hundreds of photographs of hunter and hunted.

A leopard carries its prey up a tree.

A man-eating alligator is cut open, and the arm and leg of a man are pulled from its belly.

A man in a Speedo - tan, brawny and smeared with blood - shows off his Marlin. That same man poses with dozens of different wild animals in the photography display that spreads floor to ceiling.

Mills is young in some shots, strong, proud and fierce. Later prints include his wife and daughters with a kill, often their own. The most recent show Mills with his newest weapon of choice: a bow and arrow.

Mills has spent the last six years hunting with a bow for a few reasons.

He's already killed the "Big Five" - elephant, rhinoceros, water buffalo, lion and leopard - with a rifle. Mills got all five on his first safari with his Dad in the early '60s when he was 28 and has repeated the feat several times.

Hunting with a bow is more challenging. Mills could shoot from 100 yards with his rifle. With his bow, he must be within 30 yards to get a good shot. A man who has walked in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway so many times needs some variety.

And, in a dramatic shift in hunting philosophy, Mills now finds more satisfaction in knowing he's left an animal alive than dead. Hunting with a bow allows him to "catch and release" animals that are now endangered. His arrows are tipped with darts and a vial of serum that will put the animal to sleep until the hunters administer an antidote. That endangered rhinoceros hanging in the Safari Club still roams the grasslands of Namibia. The mount is an exact replica.

"Hunters are the best conservationists because we want the animals to be there," he said.

The alligator, on the other hand, is the real deal. It was taken from Lake Okeechobee in Florida with a deep sea rod and a couple of treble hooks.

"You snag them, and then you go for a ride," he said. His alligator dragged the boat for about 30 minutes until tiring enough for Mills to reel it in and hit it with a "bang stick," a contraption that shoots a 44-caliber bullet into the brain.

Mills knows his display makes some people angry. He understands, but he had a few points to make in defense of hunters:

* When taking a trophy, hunters usually take an older animal that has likely been kicked out of the herd and left to die, he said.

* Harvested animals are given to the locals to be used for meat.

* Hunting in Africa and Asia boosts those countries' economies. Hunters often employ a couple guides, 12 to 15 trackers and a cook. Also, USAID's Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources, known as CAMPFIRE, funnels a portion of the license and trophy fees to local village governments. The money is used for schools, food and water supplies, roads, housing and other infrastructure in the communities. This gives value to the animals and dissuades locals from poaching them, while also teaching them how to manage their natural resources.

Mills always gets himself a hunt for his birthday and is looking forward to many more years with gun, fishing rod or bow and arrow in hand. But, after 50 years of hunting everywhere but the North and South poles, he's not quite sure what to hunt next.

Thermopolis already has its rhinoceros. Maybe he'll have to buy another hotel.

* Reach Hannah Wiest at (307) 266-0535 or hannah.wiest@trib.com.