Once common in the Rocky Mountain West, trumpeter swans have been a rare sight for more than a century after hunters blasted them from the sky to cash in on their skins and plumage, then in demand for women’s hats and other accessories.
Now the bird, North America’s largest and the world’s heaviest capable of flight, is coming back strong in parts of its historic range, thanks to reintroductions and prohibitions on hunting them. Yet, in Utah, they are falling in growing numbers to hunters gunning for a different species of swan.
It remains legal to shoot trumpeters in Nevada and Utah, at the southern reaches of the species’ range, if the hunter mistakes them for their smaller-bodied cousin, the tundra swan, which can be hard to distinguish from a trumpeter in flight.