8 ft Totem Pole

My 1st totem pole is finally done. The top half was done about 1 year ago. see http://lumberjocks.com/projects/58564
I really have no idea how many hours are in this. It’s probably somewhere around 250 I would guess.
This pole was made for my wife and she wanted a deer on it. The deer was a real struggle. I couldn’t find much out there that I liked so it was hard to come up with the vision of what I was trying to accomplish. It took too much time because I had no idea where I was going. The ears helped make it look a bit like a deer.. I don’t like the front legs—the front shoulders are too low. I’‘m still trying to figure out how to add eye brows that might be appropriate.
In contrast, the beaver on the bottom was fairly easy. I had seen some examples that I kind of liked and I had a pretty good vision of what I wanted. I added some material for the nose to give it more depth and I hadn’t ssen any done that way.
My neighbour is a linesman for a power company and brought me a part of a power pole to use for my next attempt. It is western red cedar about 14” diameter on the bottom x ~11 ft. long. It’s very heavy—about 300 lbs. I can lift the smaller end but not the lower. One of the issues of using power poles for carving is that they collect a lot of dirt and dust over time and they can really dull carving tools quickly. My plan is to put is to put it between centers and remove about 3/4” using my router and the biggest diameter cutter I own.

-- It's easy when you know how - but that's the hard part. Ontario, Canada