In 1976 the House of Spirits liquor store had six hundred miniature decanters made, three hundred male and three hundred female. The only difference was that the males had an extra tusk on either side of their mouth.

House of Spirits Hodag Decanter "The Hodag Legend"

To make ownership of these miniature Hodags more enjoyable to you, the following “true story” is offered.

Once upon a time, in lumber camps in the vicinity of Rhinelander, Wisc. The “ox” was the principle beast of burden.  After many years of the hardest kind of work, under the most difficult conditions, tolerating verbal & physical abuse often bordering on the unbearable, death mercifully claimed one of these animals & after the custom of the day – it was cremated.  This particular ox had been cussed out so much & so fiercely by the men in this camp that he became uncommonly mean, so mean in fact that it took seven years of burning to dislodge all of the cusses that had been heaped upon his head so that he could finally get peace for his troubled soul.

When the fire slowly died down, a mystical character arose from the ashes.  Cautiously at first it surveyed its new surrounds, then plunged through the underbrush of the forest in search of food.  Luckily, this emergence was witnessed by Gene Shepard, a Rhinelander pioneer.  Gene Shepard, keen-witted individual that he was, hurriedly developed a plan for capturing this “thing”, and hastened to assemble a crew to dig a hole – thirty feet in diameter and very deep. When the pit was completed, one of the men – chosen because he owned the finest white bull-dog in the area – was commissioned to go to the place where the thing, which by this time had been given the name “HODAG”, was last seen.  The white bull-dog was then used as bait to entice the Hodag to follow it back to where the pit had been dug.  Sure enough – the Hodag picked up the scent – and raced after the white bull-dog.  The man leading the bull-dog swerved sharply to the right as he reached the camouflaged pit, thereby causing the Hodag, who was unable to swerve in time, to plunge to the deep bottom of the covered pit.  The crash so stunned the beast that it became a simple matter for a team of men to put it to sleep by using a chloroform-soaked sponge on the end of a 30 foot bamboo pole.  It is common belief that the Hodag, made docile after the harrowing experience, made this pit its home, leaving it only from time to time to prowl the countryside at night, devouring white bull-dogs, a Hodag delicacy.

Improbable, you say?  Maybe so, But just drop in at Ed Wittock’s HOUSE OF SPIRITS, in Rhinelander, Wisc.  Talk to Dennis Annis and Mark Wittock.  They will tell you that to Rhinelanders, the Hodag has become a local legend.  That it is the symbol of the city “The Home of the Hodag.”  That it has been stamped permanently in the city’s personality.  Rhinelander’s largest recreation area is Hodag Park.  Business places have adopted the name, School athletic teams call themselves the “Hodags.”  An annual snowmobile race is called the “HODAG 50.”

Think what you want to think, but when you go to Rhinelander, Wisconsin, U.S.A., please don’t come right out and say- “they ain’t no such animal!”