When Mike Jones bought the World’s Largest Pheasant about 10 years ago, he had no idea what he was getting into.
“And if I would’ve known,” he said, “I wouldn’t have gotten involved in it.”
Jones thought holding the deed to the big bird meant he owned it. Officially, he was right. But the statue has been there so long, and it’s become such a symbol of the community, that some people in Huron think it belongs to the public.
“Everybody in town kind of thought it was owned by the city, or that nobody owned it,” Jones said.
The statue stands outside the Dakota Inn motel, along U.S. Highway 14 on the northeastern edge of the city. Jones owns the motel.
In the parking lot alongside the highway, there’s a small, rectangular building that Jones uses for storage. The pheasant is perched atop that structure.
The fiberglass statue is 28 feet tall and 40 feet long. It weighs 22 tons. The colorful, ring-necked rooster stands in a proud posture, its gaze fixed on the northern horizon.
Pheasant-hunting was booming when community leaders commissioned the statue and erected it in 1959. Because they put it on a privately owned building, ownership of the bird has changed several times.
The local Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau had a lease on the statue. President and CEO Laurie Shelton said the agreement allowed the organization to do the upkeep. About a decade ago, donors pitched in for repairs and paint. More recently, the Chamber spent its own money and insurance proceeds to fix hail damage and paint the statue again.
Those contributions have made Chamber members and donors feel like they have a stake in the statue. Some have wanted the statue moved to public land.
But Jones controls the statue’s fate. He inherited the lease agreement with the Chamber when he acquired the property, and he said the Chamber paid him a dollar a year. For the past several years, while the expiration date on the lease loomed, Jones and the Chamber considered making a new deal.
The Chamber thought about buying the statue and moving it. But Shelton said the 61-year-old fiberglass is in bad shape, according to experts.
“They did not think that we would be able to move the pheasant and keep it in one piece,” she said.
Jones disagrees.
“I had engineers look at it, and they said it’s been here for over 60 years, and it’ll probably be here another 60,” he said. “So there’s really nothing wrong with it.”
Jones is willing to sell. He said the Chamber offered him $12,000 for the statue, which he rejected. Jones said he paid a total of $100,000 for the statue, the building underneath it and the parcel of land around it.
Shelton said the Chamber doesn’t want the building or the land under the bird. The organization’s lease with Jones expired on Oct. 1, and the Chamber moved on. It conducted a community survey about the pheasant’s future.
“The consensus was that we should have the pheasant, because that’s what we’re known for, but it doesn’t matter where that pheasant is,” Shelton said.
The Chamber and city officials picked a spot on city-owned land in Memorial Park. That's just down the road from Dakota Inn, a stone’s throw away from the existing statue.
On that spot, Chamber officials plan to erect a new World’s Largest Pheasant, 2 feet taller than the current one. And for good measure, they plan to put the new one on a 12-foot pedestal.
They’re talking with a company in Nebraska that specializes in fiberglass animals. A design is in the works, and the estimated price to make the new statue is $32,600, plus extra costs for the pedestal and landscaping. The Chamber plans to spend its own money and raise private contributions, with a goal of unveiling the statue this summer.
Shelton said placing the new statue on city property is the best way to secure its future.
“The city’s always going to be here,” she said. “That business may not always be here, and the Chamber may not always be here. We don’t know where 70 years down the road is going to bring us.”
Jones is not happy with the outcome.
“It makes absolutely no sense,” he said. “I mean, why would you build another one when you already have one?”
Jones said his statue isn’t going anywhere. That means Huron could soon become the home of the World’s Two Largest Pheasants.
“Mine will be much older and wiser,” Jones said, “and it’ll figure out some way to get along.”
-Contact SDPB reporter Seth Tupper by email.
