In a major change to swan hunting in Utah, state wildlife officials propose banning the taking of trumpeter swans, a rare large-bodied cousin to tundra swans. Tundra swans would remain legal to shoot during Utah’s 73-day fall swan-hunting season.

Prompting the move is the unacceptably high number of migrating trumpeters killed each year by Utah hunters, which has led to an early closure to the swan hunt in each of the last fours.

“We will continue to evaluate the swan season structure, but our current recommendation should discourage trumpeter harvest which in turn should result in keeping the season open for its entirety,” said Heather Talley, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources’ upland game coordinator.

Utah has allowed the taking of rare trumpeter swans, considered North America’s largest bird, for years because they are easily mistaken for the much more common, but smaller tundra swan. Utah expanded its annual total of swan permits from 2,000 to 2,750 in 2019, when only a few trumpeters were killed each year and never enough to shut down the swan hunt early, according to Heather Talley, DWR’s upland game coordinator.

Utah is just one of nine states that allow swan hunting. But in those nine, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sets strict quotas on trumpeters, which are still struggling to reestablish migratory populations nearly a century after hunters blasted them to near extinction.

For Utah that quota used to be 10, but was raised to 20 in 2019 in response to growing flocks of trumpeters. Also that year, the territory open to swan hunting expanded by 10,000 acres.

“Prior to 2019, we’ve only had 20 harvested trumpeter swans recorded in the state,” Talley said in an online presentation explaining the proposed rule. “And since 2019, 85 trumpeter swans have been reported in Utah’s harvest data.”

In other words, over just the past four years, Utah hunters killed four times more trumpeters than they had killed in all the previous years DWR has been keeping track.

Over the years, the success rates for Utah swan permit holders have averaged 41%. Because of the early closures, however, success rates have plummeted from 49% in 2020 to 32% in 2022, according to DWR data.

“The decline of permits being filled is largely attributed to the early season closures in 2021 and 2022, as there were no early freezes in those years causing migration prior to the closure. These early closures are impeding the opportunity of our swan hunters,” Talley said. “In the last two years, more people have been harvesting trumpeter swan from public shooting grounds, which has been an unintended consequence of increasing the boundary to offer more opportunity.”

Prior to the 2019 rule change, just one trumpeter was killed per 800 tundra swans harvested, Talley said. But after the trumpeter quota was lifted from 10 to 20, the numbers drastically changed. In the your years since, Utah hunters have killed a total of 85 trumpeters, while the trumpeter-to-tundra ratio exploded to 1-to-41 — nearly a 40-fold increase over the prior years, according to DWR harvest data.

Officials believe the increased trumpeter harvest reflects a growing number of the big birds migrating through Utah, which is great news for swan conservation. But they also suspect hunters have deliberately targeted the species, according to Talley.

Last year, one swan hunter posted photos of himself on social media holding a deceased trumpeter, boasting how he passed numerous chances to shoot a tundra swan in hopes of getting a bead on a trumpeter.

The post, since deleted, spurred outrage among some hunters when DWR was forced to close the swan hunt down 24 days early because the 20-bird quota had once again been reached.

Under the proposed rule, killing a trumpeter, deliberately or not, would be considered poaching and the bird would be seized.

“All swan hunters will still need to check in their swans within 72 hours of harvest regardless of species as previously mandated,” Talley said. “While there have been concerns about distinguishing between tundra and trumpeter swans, we do already have several [waterfowl] regulations that mandate deciphering between different species that may look similar.”

The federally-set quotas are geared toward protecting the trumpeters that summer in the Greater Yellowstone region. Yet officials are still unsure where the trumpeter swans migrating through Utah are headed and are coming from.

Studies are underway to answer these questions by analyzing chemical isotopes in feathers and tracking trumpeter swan movements using GPS collars.

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Utah to ban hunting trumpeter swans, North America’s largest bird