Whitefish artist's sculpting career takes off after his chance encounter with an injured eagle

The eagle leaped off a branch. Wind lifted its wings as it flowed through hundreds of feathers. Talons stretched wide, ready to grasp whatever prey is on the ground.

Dave Ganley wants the watcher to feel the nonexistent wind, the eagle's uncoiled pouncing.

"It sounds dramatic, but that's what I think of when I'm carving," he said.

The Whitefish artist is the final stages of carving a detailed flying eagle from a block of white pine wood 2 feet wide, 2 feet deep and 4 feet tall.

A Big Mountain homeowner commissioned Ganley to create the eagle. Citing a confidentiality agreement with his client, Ganley, 48, declined to say who she is or for how much he is selling the eagle - other than it is good compensation for 3 1/2 months of work, which finishes soon.

Actually, the scariest part of the project is yet to come.

"The hardest part is not the art, but when the client sees it for the final time, or when you take to his house. It's like your first major football game. It's like your first time on a stage. You want to throw up. … You put so much pressure on yourself. It's such a relief to stand back and say: 'Wow, I did do it,'" Ganley said.

This type of woodcarving takes lots of planning, a chain saw, plus weeks and weeks of delicate detail work with a handheld grinder.

Patience and care are vital.

Wood isn't plaster.

"With a chain saw, you nick it [the wrong way] with that thing, you're screwed. … You can't make a mistake with wood. You check and recheck and recheck with wood," Ganley said.

To Ganley, wood sculpting is where it's at.

With plaster, iron and bronze, a sculptor makes a mold - and reproduces the object over and over and over again.

Ganley likes that each of his wood creations is unique - and irreproducible because no mold is possible.

He loves the texture, the knots of a wood sculpture - all announcing that it is one-of-a-kind.

That also means that creating a wood sculpture is painstakingly slow and expensive.

For this eagle, Ganley talked with his client until he and she were absolutely sure they were on the same wavelength.

"She wanted life, motion. She wanted it to come alive," he said. So they discussed and discussed until they had the same vision of an eagle leaping off a branch.

This is Ganley's second wooden eagle. He spent a week drawing the bird - studying numerous photographs of eagles flying, leaping and landing.

He also reached into his memory of six years ago when he was driving and came upon an eagle with a broken left wing. He picked up the eagle and drove it to a wildlife expert, who nursed it back to health.

Ganley spent 1 1/2 hours next to the eagle, studying it.

The intensity of its eyes. How each foot's back talon was longer than its front talons. How its feathers shrank as they grew closer to its scaly feet.

"The bird didn't squawk. It didn't fight or peck. It just looked right at me," Ganley said.

This helped because realism is Ganley's main goal.

Such as the 150-some quills on each of the bird's hundreds of feathers.

He has to mentally break down the grinding and perfecting of the quills and feathers into small segments as he methodically carves out the wings - his eight-hour days growing to 14 to 16 hours as his deadline looms.

Wood carving has been Ganley's lifelong hobby.

He began by whittling as a youth in his home state of Iowa. He took his only art class at a small high school.

He tried painting but found that people bought his work mainly for his homemade frames. Carving was a sideline as he created small items and scenes for window displays.

"It was good practice for me," Ganley said.

He moved to Flathead County and became a logsmith, building log cabins while carving as a hobby.

A few years ago, Ganley fell 22 feet and crushed some vertebrae, causing him to think about changing careers. Carving beckoned, but doing that for a living scared Ganley.

His girlfriend, Peg Schafer, encouraged him to strike out on his own, offering to take care of the business side on her spare time.

A couple of years ago, a builder friend asked Ganley whether he could carve an intricate wilderness scene on a huge door for a customer in Bigfork. Ganley gave it a try and did well.

Since then, he has tackled several animal statues and huge door carvings.

He doesn't lack clients, having three jobs lined up after this eagle is finished.

Ganley said: "I've got the best job in the world."