Jan. 30, 1909] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
»73 
Lynx Kill Wild Sheep. 
New York City, Jan. 25. — Editor forest and 
Stream: I was greatly interested to read in 
your issue of Dec. 19 Mr. Keele’s description 
of a wolverine attacking a moose. I know Mr. 
Keele personally, and his observations are ab¬ 
solutely reliable. A member of the Geological 
Survey of Canada for many years, few have had 
more experience in the North. 
I spent last winter at the head of the Toklat 
River, at timberline, on the north side of the 
Alaskan range. On the morning of Dec. 8, 1907, 
I was snowshoeing up the bed of a creek emerg¬ 
ing from a fairly large basin surrounded by 
lofty mountains. The first mountain on the 
south side had smooth slopes on its south end, 
but the side facing the 
basin was carved into 
rocks, precipices and 
ledges almost perpen¬ 
dicular. All the rock 
was disintegrating and 
gradually falling down, 
so that at short intervals 
there was. a succession 
of narrow slides, often 
ten feet deep, extending 
from the top to the bot¬ 
tom. At this time most 
of the rocks were bare, 
but the slides were filled 
with snow. The white 
sheep (Ovisdalli) 
often frequented this 
rough face of the moun¬ 
tain. finding much food 
in the winter which was 
frozen green. 
Approaching this 
mountain I saw several 
sheep well up on the 
corner of the broken 
slope. I came near 
enough to encourage me 
to make my camera 
ready in the hope of 
photographing them. I 
was then perhaps two 
hundred yards away. 
They soon disappeared around the corner and 
at once I circled to watch them. But they did 
not appear in sight again, and as I circled out 
further to get a clear view of the face, all had 
disappeared and I was perplexed. Going back 
to the creek bed and proceeding I soon saw 
on the ground, at the foot of the slope, a sheep, 
apparently dead, with a bloody head. Then im¬ 
mediately a lynx squatted just beside it. T was 
a hundred yards off and the lynx was looking 
at me. It quickly ran up the creek a short dis¬ 
tance and disappeared among the rocks. Fol¬ 
lowing rapidly. I saw it sitting on a ledge and 
shot it. Bringing it back to the sheep I found 
that it had just pulled the sheep down the slope. 
I had missed seeing it by a minute only. 
1 he snow revealed part of the story. The 
lynx had waited on a rock about 500 feet up, and 
as the ram (about two years old) crossed the 
slide the lynx sprang on its back and fastened 
its teeth in the left eye. Together they came 
down the slide and at the bottom a struggle 
ensued. The lynx lost its hold and fastened 
again to the right eye. Not another tooth mark 
was on the sheep. Both eyes were completely 
gouged out and had discharged great quantities 
of blood. It was a pitiful sight. 
After photographing them I lifted the head 
of the ram to examine it and found it w'as still 
alive. It arose to its knees and at once I cut 
its throat. A careful examination of its skin 
showed all the claw marks of the lynx. The 
claw marks of the left hind foot were in the 
small of the hack, the right hind claws were in 
the middle, the right fore claws were in the 
right shoulder, the left in the left side of the 
neck. This indicates clearly that the lynx had 
leaped on the back, and from its position it had 
grabbed the left eye. The lower right jaw was 
full of claw' marks which indicates that when it 
grabbed the other eye at the bottom of the slope 
three years old and larger than the ram. 
Ljmx tracks were common all winter in the 
sheep mountains and several times I saw them 
near sheep among the rocks, and once saw one 
trying to stalk a band of large - rams. 
Lynxes are undoubtedly a habitual enemy of 
sheep and their method of killing them in the 
winter is by biting them only in the eyes. The 
sheep’s coat is so thick and long that elsewhere 
only a throat hold would be effective, and this 
is not easy for the lynx to get, so it has learned 
to attack the eye. Both skulls of the sheep, 
showing the mutilation, are in the Biological 
Survey in Washington. The photograph was 
taken before I touched the ram—before it was 
dead. C. Sheldon. 
THE LYNX AND THE SHEEP IT KILLED. 
the sheep was thrown and the lynx pressed its 
fore feet in the jaw to get purchase to bite into 
the eye. The lynx, a male, weighed 16^ pounds. 
A little blood was lost, so eighteen pounds is 
probably its true weight. The ram weighed 125 
pounds. 
Jan. 3, igo8, I was at the base of Mt. McKin¬ 
ley, seventy miles distant from the Toklat, and 
saw on a mountain side, high up in the slope, a 
lynx feeding on a sheep. Going up there the 
lynx ran before I could shoot it. The snow 
above told the story. The lynx had waited on 
a rock above. Four or five sheep had passed 
it going dowm, but did not come within ten feet 
of the rock. When they got below—the slope 
was very steep—the lynx rushed down behind 
them and sprang on the back of a ewe and fas¬ 
tened its teeth to her left eye only. Both strug¬ 
gled three hundred yards down the slope and 
the ewe had died before the lynx lost its hold. 
The other eye had not been touched. There 
was no other tooth mark on the head or throat. 
Later I trapped the lynx and it weighed twenty- 
two pounds. It was a male. The ewe was 
New Publications. 
On Safari, by Abel 
Chapman. Cloth, 
340 pages, 170 illus¬ 
trations, 14s. Lon¬ 
don, Edward Ar¬ 
nold; New York, 
Longmans, Green & 
Co. 
Although mainly an 
account of big game 
hunting in British East 
Africa, a large portion 
of this excellent book is 
devoted to studies in 
bird life, and a great 
many of the illustra¬ 
tions are from sketches 
made by the author and 
by E. Caldwell. The 
book is peculiarly time- 
i'' ly, in view of the re¬ 
vival of interest in 
African game hunting, 
and the data relating to 
routes, equipment, etc., 
are valuable. Mr. Chap¬ 
man closes with a chap¬ 
ter on the necessity for 
better protective meas¬ 
ures for the big game 
than obtain at present. 
The book must be read to be appreciated, as it 
is one of the most comprehensive of modern 
works on this subject. 
True Tales of the Plains, by Buffalo Bill (W. 
F. Cody). Cloth, 260 pages, illustrated. 
New York, the Empire Book Company. 
While accounts of his own part in the fron¬ 
tier wars are reviewed at length, the major por¬ 
tion of the narrative is devoted to those brave 
men, red and white, who led opposing forces in 
the wars with the Indians, and with whom his 
fortunes were cast. He writes graphically of 
his experiences from the time when, as a lad 
of fourteen, he rode in the pony express, to be¬ 
come trapper, buffalo hunter and scout by turns, 
seeing the great conflict end with the death or 
defeat of the red man and the passage of many 
of the bravest soldiers that ever lived. 
All the game laws of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and now in force, arc 
given in the Game Lazos in Brief. See adv. 
