Hayward, Wisconsin
Admit it, if you saw a large ‘big boy’ statue ready to serve you a burger from across the frozen tundra of Little Round Lake, you would have to giggle a little bit or at least wonder what the heck was going on out there. Butch Daul, co-owner of The Dock, is hoping you’ll stop in and ask about it….
I decided to find out more about this myself, so I went to The Dock Sunday for the launch of a new ice out contest that Butch and co-owners Scott Daul, and Daniele Hopper, are hosting. Butch told me that he first came up with the idea when he noticed different ice-out contests as he was driving through the Cumberland area, and thought The Dock was a perfect place to try this. They began the search for a unique item to sink and found one in the big boy statue, renaming it Little Round Hank.
Daul shared their ideas with Jeff Wolf, who then spearheaded the plan into reality, with the help of Jeff Erdman. Jeff built a base for the fiberglass statue that will make it easy for Round Lake Marina to pull it out of the water come springtime.
Folks can stop at The Dock to buy $5 guesses as to when Little Round Hank sinks. Cameras will record the actual date and time it plunges into the Lake. The winner gets $1000, a second-place winner gets $500, and a third-place winner gets a gift certificate from The Dock.
The remainder of the proceeds will be donated to the Sawyer County Snowmobile & ATV Alliance- and Butch estimates it will bring in between $5-7,000. “We can’t attend the Alliance or club meetings and yet we benefit from the traffic, so this is our way to give back” Daul explained.
Jeff Wolf, Jeff Erdman, Craig Bell, Tim Davison, Brian Larson, Doug Hamblin, and Dave Szmanowski, members of several local snowmobile clubs, gathered Sunday morning to load the statue onto a trailer and take it out onto the lake. A cold, snowy morning it was as the crew made their way across Little Round Lake to find just the perfect spot for the statue.
There were already a couple hundred dollars’ worth of guesses in the books before the statue was even erected – and Butch talked of making it into an annual event as today’s patrons eagerly signed up for guesses. I could clearly see Little Round Hank’s foolish grin from inside The Dock as I waited for lunch- I think he even winked at us as he proudly stood there like a beacon on Little Round Lake.
Pictures provided by Cathy LaReau, Jeff Wolf, and Jeff Erdman.