Whitetail Sunrize - Hand Carved Whitetail Deer Scene

“Whitetail Sunrize” is a titled hand carved wildlife scene. The development of this project was completed in collaboration with Sasha Nugent to create a birthday present for her father Ted Nugent. The title is derived from their hunting expedition service “Sunrize Safaris.” We presented it too him at the YO Ranch in Mountain Home, TX in 2006 – which was a great trip!

Ted Nugent’s passion for hunting centers around the whitetail deer, so this was the obvious subject. The pattern itself is a composite of a scene developed by Lora S. Irish (www.carvingpatterns.com) who we frequently leverage for our wildlife carvings.

Carved scenes of this nature are developed like a painting, only we have the advantage of relief to help create the illusion of perspective. The moment desired is, for those of you that hunt or otherwise enjoy the outdoors, that which takes place just after sunrise as the black of night lifts and the silhouettes around you begin to take distinctive shapes. Every now and then that moment comes and standing before you is a prize buck – my goal was to create that scene in a carving.

Color and burned detail plays a major part in the development of this image. Without the brightly colored orange, yellow, and red the contrast of the darkened foreground would be meaningless. I figured I would post some of these projects on this site as in general woodworkers like to experiment and what is shown here is not a common practice. Try it – the worse that can happen is you strip the paint off and try again! Between you and I (yeah as this is I’m sure going to find itself into Google) ... we did that on this project we hated the first attempt at coloring it and stripped the whole panel back to bare wood! It even happens to pro’s!

Material is solid quarter sawn white oak, and yes – oak carves very well, at least white oak does. Don’t waste your time carving red oak with this kind of detail it will just frustrate you with splinters. The density of white oak is far more of a pleasure to carve, but you will need a heavy mallet and some good old cast steel carving tools! The frame is a basic American black walnut.

-- Eric M. Saperstein, Master Craftsman www.artisansofthevalley.com