🦅 Buzzard Day: How a Frontier Hunt Turned Into Ohio’s Weirdest Spring Tradition

Every March, like clockwork, the skies over Hinckley, Ohio darken with circling wings. Hundreds of turkey vultures—buzzards, if you want to sound like a local—descend on the township almost to the exact day, year after year.

Why here? Why now? And how on earth did this odd migration turn into pancakes, parades, and one of the strangest small-town traditions in the Midwest?

To answer that, you have to rewind more than 200 years, to a Christmas Eve where the forests of Hinckley echoed not with carols… but with gunfire.

Picture it: Ohio is only 15 years old as a state. Hinckley Township is a hardscrabble frontier carved out of the wilderness, where dense forests pressed right up against small farm clearings. Families were scattered across cabins, winters were harsh, and predators were very real.

Wolves hunted livestock. Bears weren’t afraid to raid pig pens. Deer—far from the gentle Disney version—were pests that trampled crops and stripped young orchards bare. For settlers who were barely eking out survival, this wasn’t just an inconvenience. This was life-or-death.

So the townsfolk decided to do something bold, brutal, and very frontier: they planned an organized, township-wide circle hunt.

At dawn on December 24, 1818, as many as 600 men and boys (depending on which version of the story you hear) armed themselves with muskets, rifles, pitchforks, knives, clubs—whatever they had. They spread out around the township in four massive units, forming a huge square that surrounded Hinckley’s wilderness.

When a bugle sounded, they began to march inward, driving every animal they could find toward the center.

What happened next must have been chaos:

Yet somehow, the hunters managed to avoid turning their guns on each other. Accounts say only one or two people were slightly injured—miraculous, considering hundreds of firearms were being discharged in close quarters.

By the end of the day, the tally was staggering: 300+ deer, 21 bears, 17 wolves, and countless turkeys, foxes, and raccoons.

This wasn’t mindless bloodsport—it was a calculated act to eliminate predators and stockpile food. Pelts were valuable, meat was shared, and families celebrated survival in the way only pioneers could: with a big roast and plenty of whiskey.

Stories say a giant black bear was roasted over an open fire that very night. Men sang, swapped stories, and even recited poetry (because apparently even in 1818 someone always brings a guitar.)

It was brutal, but for frontier Ohio, it worked. Livestock was safer. Crops were protected. Families had full bellies going into winter.

Here’s where nature gets poetic, and not a little macabre. Legend has it that a huge snowstorm buried and froze all the remains, keeping them intact until the spring thaw. When the snow melted, all those carcasses—skinned, butchered, or abandoned—left behind plenty for scavengers. And no scavenger is better than the turkey vulture.

As Spring began, buzzards came swooping in, feasting on what was left behind, all the while sanitizing the land of the messy leftovers. And then, almost mysteriously, they came back the next year. And the year after that. And the year after that.

Locals noticed a pattern: the birds arrived in Hinckley every spring, around March 15. Some even claimed they showed up with eerie accuracy—even in leap years, when calendars shifted.

Now to be fair, there is some contention over whether or not the buzzards ever even leave…in fact one theory says they may be finding enough roadkill to keep them well nourished through the winter, and so rather than ceremoniously returning on a certain date they might be simply coming out of the shadows and being noticed again once the sun begins to shine. Regardless, Ohioans continue to celebrate the ‘return of the buzzards’ year after year after year.

For more than a century, it was just one of those odd bits of local lore—until 1957, when a Cleveland Metroparks ranger told a reporter that the buzzards had returned “right on schedule” yet again. The story hit the Cleveland Press, people got curious, and by that spring over 9,000 visitors swarmed Hinckley Reservation to watch the birds arrive.

Sensing an opportunity (and knowing Ohioans will always gather for food), the Hinckley Chamber of Commerce leaned in. They organized the first official Buzzard Day festival, complete with pancake breakfasts, birdwatching, and all the small-town pageantry you can imagine.

These days, Buzzard Day is part springtime ritual, part roadside spectacle. Every March 15, a Cleveland Metroparks naturalist heads out at dawn to Buzzard Roost in Hinckley Reservation, scanning the skies for the first returning bird. Crowds gather, sometimes thousands deep, to cheer as the buzzards circle back home.

And yes—there are still pancakes. Always pancakes.

If you zoom out, Buzzard Day is more than just a quirky festival. It’s a story about survival, adaptation, and how communities turn hardship into identity.

It’s strange. It’s morbid. It’s wonderful.

And it could only happen in Ohio. 😅

👉 So next time you see a vulture circling over Hinckley, don’t just think “gross.” Think of 600 settlers trudging through the snow with muskets, a bear on the spit, whiskey in hand—and how from all that chaos, Hinckley ended up with the weirdest, most beloved spring holiday in the state.

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