LeRoy Schmidt has a passion for hunting, something he inherited from his father at a very young age.

He also loves to travel.

Luckily for Schmidt, he found a way to combine the two and there's a room full of trophies in the Caledonia home he shares with his wife, Karen, to show for it.

"My dad loved to hunt and fish," said the 71-year-old Schmidt, a native of Racine. "I was brought up to do that."

But as a young boy, Schmidt probably never envisioned where his love for hunting would take him.

"I've been on every continent except South America," said Schmidt, who was a tool and die maker at the Bosch Co., formerly Racine Hydraulics, for 37 1/2 years and now works part-time for the Caledonia Parks Department.

A lifetime of hunting has produced 100 trophy animals, Schmidt said, many taken over the years in Wisconsin. He and his wife own 80 acres and a summer home in Adams County, where Schmidt goes deer hunting every fall.

But his passion took a little detour about 10 years ago, when he decided to branch out to exotic animals.

In February 1996, Schmidt bagged a Mouflon sheep on the island of Hawaii that landed him in the record book. He won that year's bronze award (third place) as issued by the Safari International Records of Exotics, a scoring system for exotic animals.

"I liked to watch hunting shows about it," said Schmidt, who learned all about adventure during an eight-year stint as a U.S. Navy Seal. "I was hunting the regular animals. Then, I got into the exotic animals. When I got started, I just loved it. It's a different style of animal that I like to have in my collection."

It started, Schmidt said, with a trip to Texas where he went to hunt Spanish goat. Trips to Florida, the island of Hawaii and more exotic locales like Russia and Africa followed for Schmidt.

Schmidt has 11 trophies from Africa, including zebra. And there's the bear he took in Siberia that marked a too-close-for-comfort call.

Hunting with a high-powered rifle, Schmidt had the bear in sight and took a shot from about 200 yards.

"After the first shot, the bear turned and came right at me," Schmidt recalled.

With the bear closing in, Schmidt readied for a second shot. "My guide said, 'Don't miss.' And I said, 'Don't worry, I'm not planning on it.' "

Schmidt felled the bear with a shot from 75 yards.

The latest addition to his trophy collection is a first-place award by the Safari International Records of Exotics for 2008 for the four-horn ram taken by a muzzleloader.

Schmidt shot the four-horn ram, also known as Jacob sheep, Aug. 15, 2008 while hunting at the Hog Wild Hunting Ranch in Northland, Mich., on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

What made this kill so special for Schmidt was that it was taken with a black powder rifle he made himself.

"That's just something that I did on my own about six years ago," Schmidt said.

Schmidt said he only uses the black powder rifle (muzzleloader) when hunting exotic animals because it's more of a challenge because the hunter has to be in close proximity to the animal to make an accurate shot.

As for his next expedition, Schmidt is hoping to go for a Texas Dall sheep.

"The sheep are so timid," Schmidt said. "They don't like to let people get close to them. You have to get pretty close to get a good shot. That makes it more of a challenge."