Knox County, Ohio — They affectionately call him “The Buzzard Man” for reasons that will become apparent after reading this story.
David Edwards just passed a personal milestone – 12,000 groundhogs killed by this sharpshooting marksman who is steeped in military experience. And, even more remarkable is that 12,000 figure is just since 1996 when Edwards began keeping a record of his conquests.
There were many groundhogs before 1996, to be sure.
Groundhogs are considered a nuisance species by many homeowners and farmers because of the damage they can do to a landscape. They may be hunted any time of the year in Ohio.
Ohio Outdoor News marked the occasion of Edwards’ 10,000th groundhog kill in the Sept. 10, 2021, edition. So, he’s shot an additional 2,000 groundhogs just in the past three years.
“It’s unbelievable,” Edwards said simply during a recent interview. “I had to keep checking my numbers because lately I’ve found that it takes me three years to kill 1,000. I think, man, how did I do that? … But, I guess more than 60 years of experience has paid off.”
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How he does it is with surgeon-like precision.
“It didn’t start out with any particular number in mind,” Edwards said. “I started out hunting with a single-shot .22. Groundhogs are everywhere and it’s easy to get permission (to hunt them). Most of the time, (landowners) didn’t care as long as you didn’t tear up fences or anything like that.”
Edwards still seeks the required annual landowner permission on the properties where he hunts even though he’s hunted a bunch of them for more than 50 years.
There’s no shortage of groundhogs to hunt, Edwards said. He explained that he’ll shoot out a “groundhog condominium” den in one week and two weeks later another bunch of critters have moved into the same locale.
“Groundhogs don’t live in a colony like prairie dogs out West,” he said. “But, they are sort of a loose colony. There will be several of them in any one area and they visit with one another.”
Edwards identifies the trails going from one den site to another in order to find his targets.
Coyotes are the only other game that Edwards pursues.
“I’ve killed one deer with a gun and four with a car,” Edwards said. “Deer hunting got to be a hassle on properties where I had permission but I had other people coming through who didn’t have permission.”
Today, the 77-year-old Edwards employs a long-range rifle to shoot groundhogs, sometimes at great distances.
“I’ve killed the majority of my groundhogs and coyotes with (that rifle),” he said. “ … The average (distance) is somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 yards. With the big guns, I can shoot farther so it might be somewhere around a 350-yard average. I’ve killed a lot of groundhogs at 400 (yards), 500, 600, and my longest shot was 710 yards.”
Edwards explained that a lot of the farms he hunts are in Amish country in Ohio, but there are many other farms that are not.
“I just have so many farms to hunt on,” he said. “I’ll even have people stop me sometimes on the road and ask me to hunt their farms.”
It all began rather innocuously.
“I’d just be out driving around and I’d see groundhogs or sign of groundhogs and I would just stop and ask for permission,” he said. “Most of the time, they’d give me permission. But, 30 or 40 years ago, I started consolidating. Once I had a good farm (to hunt on), I’d ask the neighboring farmer. It just grew from there. I literally could walk an entire day and never leave a place where I have permission to hunt on … I have that many adjoining farms.”
One of Edwards’ favorite farms to hunt has been in his lineup since 1970, he said.
“I’m almost like a part of the farm in a lot of these places I’ve been there so long,” he said.
Among other things, hunting groundhogs keeps Edwards active.
“But, it’s not like hunting rabbits where you’re walking all the time,” he said. “I walk to a good vantage point and then shoot that field and then move on to the next field. And, I do backtrack a lot, so there is some walking.”
Edwards was in the Air National Guard and on active duty from 1967 to 1969.
“I saw an ad in the base paper to try out for the rifle team and I made it,” the Plain City, Ohio, native said. “And I did pretty good. For a young guy who had never shot, not too bad.”
A lot of the matches Edwards shot in were long-range affairs up to 1,000 yards with open sights.
“It has helped (with the groundhog hunting), realizing how far away I can hit these targets,” he said. “You learn things shooting long-range like that. I learned a lot from other competitors.”
The last match that Edwards shot in was in 1986 with a U.S. Marine unit in Okinawa, Japan. That, too, was a learning experience.
“The Marines really teach their people how to shoot,” he said.
The bottom line is that Edwards is somewhat of a crack shot.
“Oh, I tell people that I get lucky a lot,” he smiled.
Edwards still plans to continue hunting groundhogs, but he has no particular final number of kills in mind.
“The (record-keeping) began because farmers would ask me how many I killed and I couldn’t remember from one week to the next,” he said. “So, I just started to write it down to inform the farmers. But, there was 30 years (before record-keeping began in 1996) where I didn’t keep track.”
Back to the name, The Buzzard Man. How did it come to be?
“It comes from a time when I was hunting an Amish farm … and the farmer would see all of these buzzards up on the hillside eating all of these dead groundhogs after I would leave,” Edwards explained. “So, he started calling me The Buzzard Man.”
Edwards even has business cards made up that proclaim that The Buzzard Man can take care of your rodent problems.
His kills don’t go to waste, he said, because the carcasses are consumed by turkey vultures, coyotes, bald eagles, foxes, and the like.
“The farmers are most important in my success by allowing me and my friends to hunt woodchucks on their properties,” Edwards summed. “… It’s been a lifetime of hunting and gee whiz.”
He didn’t finish the thought but no doubt he has groundhogs, and his next targets, on his mind.