Booze & Buckshot

One night last week an edgy quiet lay over the border between Wisconsin and Michigan in the great Upper Peninsula sector south of Lake Superior. More than 270,000 armed Wisconsin men--enough for 18 Army divisions--huddled near campfires in the cold; another army of over 320,000 from Michigan waited restlessly near by, cleaning guns, checking ammunition. Finally, half an hour before sunrise, the first shot cracked through the pines. The 1961 deer season was under way.

Some of the hunters wore the new bright yellow togs, but most sported head-to-boots outfits in traditional red--cap, jacket, shirt, trousers, even suspenders. Pinned between their shoulders was a big red license plate. All were in moods ranging from festive to rambunctious. Said Rancher Bob Lahde, who "takes in" hunters: "You can tell how keyed up these hunters are by the way they eat. First day, they'll take maybe one of my bear-burgers. Then they get a buck, and my wife and I can't get enough food moving to them."

Despite the swarming hunters, there are so many deer (in some areas 30 per sq. mi.) that there are roughly only three hunters for every legal buck (one with antlers at least 3 in. long). All are looking for the "big horse," a stag weighing over 200 Ibs. with a ten-point rack.

A Buck Well Spent. Once a buck is bagged, many a hunter makes a beeline for Hurley, Wis. (pop. 2,763), affectionately known as the "Tijuana of the North." Traditionally, a triumphal entry into Hurley can only be achieved with a gutted buck on one's fender. To take care of this technicality, many trophyless hunters buy a bootleg buck for $40 or $50 from a local deerslayer, ride into town without having fired a shot. Hurley's six-block Silver Street is jammed with 56 bars, aswarm with dough-eyed girls.

Hurley's raffish oases have names like the 4 Ever Amber Tap, Nora's Gold Nugget, Augie's Rainbow, Lovely Girls, and Joan's French Casino. The loudest and most profane action is at Joan's, a small, chairless place cheered chiefly by the muted glow of the pinball machines. Joan, a 32-year-old blonde with a foul mouth and matching disposition, is the joint's leading (and only) attraction. Alternately kissing and cussing visiting huntsmen, Joan sets drink prices by a whimsical sliding scale based on how much the traffic will bear. Recalls one of Joan's customers: "Last year she had a big woodpile in here, and she just threw your change behind that. She made you feel like a heel if you dug around to get it back."

Something to Do. Everyone in Hurley expects an occasional raid by agents of the Wisconsin beverage and cigarette tax division. For staying open after hours a saloon owner coughs up $500, can reopen next morning; for soliciting too obviously, a B-girl may be fined $200. While sin is rampant in Hurley, and the town's three churches are fighting a losing battle to save its wild and woolly soul, the community is not totally without law and order. An estimated $22,400 enters municipal coffers from saloon licenses, and Mayor Sam Giovanni is torn between righteousness and revenue. Admitting that some saloons should not be granted licenses, he says: "I'm not protecting them; I would like to see them run just as clean as in any other city. I think something should be done about it." Hurley has heard the phrase before.

The deer season lasts for eight days; in the first four, Wisconsin counted four hunters dead of gunshot wounds, six of heart attacks. At season's end, the hunters and their red shirts disappear abruptly from Hurley's streets, vanishing southward into workaday anonymity. The girls drift away, and Hurley reverts to its somnolent tween-season existence as an iron-mining town.

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