Highlights Archives
Lions and Tigers and — Hodags? — Oh My!
It's April Fools Day in a state that's always appreciated a good joke. We've had classic pranks, and ones that depended on new technologies (some 19th, and some 21st, century). Heck, we even had a governor who was more famous as the author of humor books than as a politican. But surely the best known (and perhaps most elaborate) joke perpetrated in Wisconsin was the hoax of the Hodag, created by Eugene Shepard (1845-1923).
At the time, tourism was beginning to take off as an economic force in the state. Highways had been built from Beloit to Bayfield, and communities in the Northwoods were hoping that recreational hunting and fishing would replace diminishing lumber revenues. Shepard, who had worked as a surveyor and timber cruiser for various lumber companies, leaped on the promotional bandwagon. He did as much as anyone to popularize the legends of Paul Bunyan, inserting his drawings and articles into the press under titles such as Paul Bunyan, Noted Pioneer in Land Clearing.
When a freshly minted lumberjack arrived in the woods, old timers would tell him to be on guard for a fearful creature called a Hodag. They might even hire someone to go into the woods at night near their camp to make unearthly noises that would leave a greenhorn terrified to leave camp alone. It was described in a pseudo-scientific pamphlet as a "ferocious beast [with] horns on its head, large bulging eyes, terrible horns and claws. A line of large sharp spikes ran down the ridge of its back and long tail. ... The hodag never laid down. It slept leaning against the trunks of trees. It could only be captured by cutting deeply into the trunks of its favorite trees. It was a rare animal of limited distribution."
Shepard claimed to have uncovered a live Hodag weighing 265 pounds in the dense swamps around Rhinelander. It "fed on mud turtles, water snakes and muskrats, but it did not disdain human flesh." He said he had found a cave where it lived and, with the aid of a few lumberjacks, had blocked the entrance with large rocks. After they anesthetized it with chloroform, it was securely tied and "taken to Rhinelander, where a stout cage had been prepared for it. It was exhibited at the Oneida County Fair. An admission fee was charged and a quite large sum of money earned. Later Mr. Shepard captured a female Hodag with her 13 eggs. All of these hatched. He taught the young Hodag a series of tricks, hoping to exhibit the animals for profit."
It was all, of course, an elaborate but good-natured hoax, and seeing the pictures of the supposed beast one can understand why Shepard insisted that the tent at the Oneida County Fair be kept dimly lit. It couldn't have fooled anyone who didn't want to be fooled, but it did stimulate interested in tourism by branding the Northwoods as a playful region where, just perhaps, anything was possible. Shepard spent his last years operating a resort near Rhinelander.
:: Posted March 31, 2006
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