According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, a male trumpeter can reach up to 35 pounds in weight, stand over four feet high and have a wingspan of over seven feet. The tundra swan remained and is more common but is smaller, reaching only 20 pounds and standing three feet high with a wing span of 6 to 7 feet.

This bird may have been the last of his kind in the region and avoided being shot for 20 or 30 years, which is their life span. More likely, this “goose” was a mute swan. These are the swans of big city parks and were imported from Europe in the late 19th century. Some took up residence in the wild. Mute swans are only slightly smaller than the trumpeter but clearly within the size range of this “giant goose.”

Remember that in 1926, most of these people were no longer familiar with swans in the wild. Unless they knew of them from city parks they might be inclined to call them a goose. Furthermore the reporter would probably call any big water bird a “goose” and a smaller one a “duck”. We have a photograph from 1910 of a white pelican shot in our neighborhood on the Missouri River. The hunters spread its wings and held it up in front of the local barber shop. The newspaper labeled it as a “giant goose.”

I wish we could see the picture of this particular bird. It could be a pelican if not a swan. It’s not an unknown species.

Certainly an odd postcard week.

I hope Humpty Dumpty kicked their butts afterwards.

The article also mentions shooting it with a rifle, rather than a shotgun (maybe that’s being nitpicky) but who hunts water fowl with rifles? But id’ing the man’s gun as a rifle, gives me just enough doubt.

Then again, those were different times. Every state I’ve lived in (Great Lakes) has had rules to plug your gun so you can only use three shells at a time, not the TEN that were used to bring this bird down.