The axehandle hound is a wild canine creature found in the folklore of American lumberjacks. According to logger legend, axehandle hounds stalked the grounds of America’s North Woods and possessed ravenous appetites for the handles of both axes and peaveys (peaveys are logging instruments used to roll or otherwise reposition logs). They were not known to consume any food other than the handles of these implements. They prowled around lumber camps at night, searching for and devouring any axe and peavey handles they could find. The legends of the axehandle hound date back at least to the nineteenth century and continued to circulate in lumberjack campsites into the early twentieth century.
Lumberjacks made a sport of telling tall tales about the strange beasts they saw in the forest. Often, two or more lumberjacks would prank a newcomer to the woodcutting profession by relating stories about encounters with these wild creatures. The tale-tellers would go back and forth in their discussions, making observations and asking questions of one another in a serious manner, in the hopes of leaving novice lumberjacks befuddled or frightened. The animals that sprang from the imaginations of the lumber men were collectively termed “fearsome critters.” The axehandle hound was one such fearsome critter, although it was not known for being vicious. Its only fearsome quality, in fact, was its readiness to consume the handles of the lumberjacks’ tools of the trade.
The bodies of axehandle hounds were shaped like axes: they had long, thin torsos atop very short legs, and heads that were shaped like axe blades. They were said to roughly resemble dachshunds. During their nocturnal scavenging missions, axehandle hounds were able to consume enormous numbers of handles, which made them a profound and expensive source of irritation to both lumberjacks and the people who ran depots. Axehandle hounds demonstrated particular pleasure in the consumption of the handles of peaveys, and exhibited a pronounced distaste for handles made with red oak. (Red oak handles, incidentally, were looked down upon as inferior by lumberjacks.) The axehandle hound could be tamed and even could make a good pet, if the owner could afford a copious supply of handles with which to feed the dog.
Henry Tryon, who encountered some of the lumberjacks’ legends of forest creatures firsthand, relates a humorous anecdote concerning the axehandle hound in his volume entitled Fearsome Critters. One rather injudicious lumberjack named Jim Peters, so the story goes, domesticated an axehandle hound. There was, unfortunately, one major problem with Peters’s choice of pet: Peters had only one leg, and in place of his other, he used the handle of an axe. To keep his makeshift appendage complete and undamaged, he was forced to wear it to bed. Finally, in an attempt to rid himself of the persistent danger of having his wooden leg eaten, Peters fed his axehandle hound handles made of red oak. This stratagem was effective: the hound, repulsed by such poor fare, vacated Peters’s home, leaving Peters and his wooden leg in peace. Though the axehandle hound is a rather obscure member of the menagerie of American folk monsters, its fame reached even the notice of renowned Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, who, in his Book of Imaginary Beings, mentioned the legendary canine in the chapter entitled “The Fauna of America.”
Today, in northern Minnesota, the axehandle hound is commemorated in the name given to a boat-access campground: the recreational site is called simply Ax-Handle Hound. It is located on the Little Fork River, which is a watercourse that was formerly used by loggers—perhaps even by those who promulgated the humorous tales of this hungry beast of the night.
Andrew Albritton
See also Animal Tales; Fearsome Critters; Lumberjack Tales
Further Reading
Borges, Jorge Luis, with Margarita Guerrero. 1969. The Book of Imaginary Beings. Revised, enlarged, and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author. New York: E. P. Dutton.
Brown, Charles E. 1935. Paul Bunyan Natural History. Madison, WI: C. E. Brown. http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/search.asp?id=1126. Accessed August 20, 2015.
Tryon, Henry H. 1939. Fearsome Critters. Cornwall, NY: Idlewild Press. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015070520526;view=1up;seq=1. Accessed August 20, 2015.