(Olor columbianus) and (Olor buccinator)
(Subfamily, CYGNINAE)
Both the whistling swan (=Olor columbianus=) and the trumpeter swan
(=Olor buccinator=) were once very plentiful on the Pacific Coast
hunting grounds, as far south as central California, and especially so
on the Columbia river and the lakes of Oregon and Washington. A few
were met with also as far south as San Diego county, California.
I shall never forget the first two swans I ever killed and my
experience with them. It was the first winter after I came to
California and I was living in Los Angeles, then a little Mexican
village, and three of us were doing our own housekeeping. Whatever the
reason--most likely from some hallucination of boyhood--I entertained
the belief that swans must be exceedingly fine eating. As I prided
myself then, just after crossing the plains, upon being a good cook,
great preparations were made for an extra fine feast on what I fancied
would be a delicious bird. We had a good stove and the first of the
two swans was carefully "stuffed" with the choicest dressing,
consisting of the combined suggestions of the three of us. It was
placed in the oven, the fire carefully tended and the magnificent bird
repeatedly "basted." When it was ready and placed on the table it fell
to my lot to do the carving. Having drawn my knife across the
hunger-producing carcass without making any perceptible impression, I
decided that it must be the fault of a dull knife. Among our table
furnishings we had no sharpening steel, a scythe stone doing service
in its stead. I hunted this up and began on the knife with the
"mower's challenge" stroke and soon had an edge that would have cut
through anything less than an eighty-pound rail. With no little effort
I amputated the legs and the wings, and cutting a generous piece from
one side of the breast passed it to one of my companions, who at once
began on it with his knife. A few attempts to sever it and he reached
for the scythe stone. Then when he began chewing on the segregated
piece he declared that it was not cooked enough. A dispute followed as
to whether it is over-cooking or under-cooking that makes a bird
tough. With this momentous question still unsettled we decided that
some of the many ingredients that we had put into the "stuffing" must
have given the meat its sole-leather consistency. We had a couple of
hounds, whose teeth had been well tested in many a coyote kill, and we
passed this first swan up to them.
The next day the other bird was worked into a fine stew and well
cooked. When served the stew was fine. The dumplings were light and
fairly melted in our mouths; the red peppers were hot; the aroma of
onions was just of that degree to suggest the ambrosia of the gods;
but the swan! Well, the hounds ate it through the compulsion of
hunger.
A half-grown swan, however, is very good eating.
There is very little difference in the two varieties. The whistling
swan being more of a northern bird, rarely migrating as far south as
central California. About the only noticeable difference is that the
whistling swan has a small yellow spot at the V-shaped point of the
bill where it meets the eye.