BUTTE (AP) — Bill Clark won’t be hunting for a trophy bull moose this year.

He’s building one.

Orange sparks jumped from the blue flame of Clark’s welder one recent afternoon as he worked on the life-sized beast constructed from scrap metal, rebar and pieces of horseshoes, his signature material.

A cable of a man, Clark began construction of the 1,500-pound creature more than a year ago. He works in the garage of his home surrounded by tool benches, welding equipment and a collection of antler sheds.

Clark began using welding equipment to make art 35 years ago while a boilermaker for the Anaconda Co.

‘‘People would be reading magazines when we didn’t have anything to do,’’ Clark, 60, remembers. ‘‘Instead of reading I was out beading on metal.’’ He’s since built 14 life-sized pieces, and hundreds of candlestick holders and small cowboy sculptures. He displays the large sculptures in his yard, where they are exposed to the elements.

Clark prefers rust.

It adds character, he said. He applies a chemical to the sculptures to make the iron even more susceptible to Mother Nature.

‘‘I don’t believe in painting,’’ he said. ‘‘I just like it to be natural.’’ Among the pieces displayed on his 72-acre ranch are a miner pushing an ore car in honor of his father, Walter, who worked at the Mountain Consolidated Mine in Butte.

An iron burro, his favorite and most detailed piece, is named ‘‘Lonesome’’ after a pack animal his family once owned. In 2001, he built a more than 3,000-pound horse named ‘‘Murphy’’ after his friend Gary Murphy, 46, who was killed that same year after his horse reared and landed on top of him.

An ominous sculpture named ‘‘meth monster’’ sports a monster inside its stomach, a snake in its mouth and a spider on its head, which was made from a propane tank.

‘‘That’s just to show the little kids the bad things meth can do to you,’’ Clark said during a recent tour.

Other sculptures on his property are a deer, a buffalo, and a ‘‘cowboy made of steel,’’ which was the first large-scale sculpture he built in 1985, and ‘‘the Auditor,’’ a dog that roamed ownerless at the Berkeley Pit.

Clark’s wife, Barbara, is perhaps the artist’s biggest fan.

‘‘His work is awesome, and he does a really good job at it,’’ she said. ‘‘If he doesn’t like something he will take it apart and put it back together. I’ve seen him do that before.’’ People often stop at his home and inquire about purchasing one of the sculptures, but Clark said he won’t part with them.

‘‘I could have sold these hundreds of times to people who stop, but this is just a hobby, and I keep them for myself,’’ he said.

And when it comes to the burro on the north side of the couple’s property, Mrs. Clark said she’s putting her foot down.

‘‘I told him he could never sell that one because it’s my favorite,’’ she laughed.

Clark’s moose, built with roughly 2,700 horseshoes, will be unveiled in his yard as early as this spring and the iron artist already is preparing for his next creation.

‘‘All I have to do is look at a pile of iron and I see an animal of some sort,’’ he said.