IOIO 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June 29, 1907. 
Canada Lynx and Wildcat 
By MANLY HARDY 
[It is gratifying among the flood of so-called nature writing which in these days is poured from the pnn g 
presses so much of which is purest fiction, to meet wi th a natural history article containing solid facts like 
Arose in Mr. Hardy’s article. Newspaper reports, magazine articles and some books portray the lynx and 
Scat under'these names, or others, as being dangerous animals of great size and of high —age and not 
very long ago, an extremely popular writer gave us a tale in which a lynx was regarded as a worthy enemy by 
a great gray wolf, and pictures the frightful battle which took place between the two. Those who are fam 
with the lynx, its size and its ways, understand very well that in a battle with a gray wolf a lynx would have 
about as much chance of victory as would a cottontail rabbit; but the men who know much about the habits o 
the lynx are few a number. Trappers have seen their actions while in the trap, but it is rare for a man m the 
woods to get sight of lynx or wildcat, much less' to have an opportunity to observe how the animal acts w 
not under human observation. It is for this reason that Mr. Hardy’s observations are so valua) e. 
It is to be r< nembered that as this country fills up with people, the wild animals m it not only are killed 
off and driven a ,ay from their former haunts, but also that they learn more and more about man, and change 
their attitude toward him. Nowhere has this been more clearly demonstrated than in the attitude toward ma 
of the grizzly bear. The time was, a century ago—say when Lewis and Clark ascenoec tie . issouri iv , 
for many years thereafter-the grizzly bear was a most f erocious animal, which, ,n many cases, attac ^ 
sight. This was natural enough, for in those early times the grizzly bears knew man on y as a s. , g 
wfth stone or bone-headed arrows, which no matter how powerful the bow that propelled them, could hardly 
penetrate through fur, tough hide, layers of fat and flesh deeply enough to reach the vital parts of one of^these 
huge animals. Thus, in those days, the grizzly bear was the master of the plains and the mountains of the 
West. He had no enemies that could successfully cope with him. Rarely, it is true, a jear nog rave a g 
with a number of Indians, and the multitude of their arrows might kill him, but this occurred seldom, an or 
the most part the bear was avoided by the Indians, or if stumbled upon without warning he destroyed them. 
Mr. Hardy shows that the lynx is easily killed by a blow or two ol a small stick, and collects tie en uey 
erroneous impression which prevails with regard to their size and their courage.— Editor.] 
So many people have only a confused idea of 
the difference between these two animals that it 
is better, in the beginning, to give sorire of the 
principal points of difference. 
The Canadian lynx, often called lucivee (loup- 
cervier), has a foot as large as a man’s hand, 
covered w-ith woolly hair, like the toot of a 
snowshoe rabbit, while the wildcat, o£ rufous 
lynx, has a bare foot, just like that of the house 
cat. The tail of the lynx, which is some four 
inches long, ends in a jet black* tuft, while the 
wildcat has a tail from five to six inches long, 
tapering toward the end like one’s finger and 
for the last two inches dark above and dotted 
or spotted below*. 1 he ears of the Canadian lynx 
are gray.and have tips of black hair. 1 he wild¬ 
cat’s ears are a grayish white on the back and 
have only the rudiments of tips. In both species 
the female is redder than the male, the reddest 
female lynx being about the color of the grayest 
male wildcat. As both are called bobcats it is 
often hard to tell which the person speaking of 
them means unless one can see the animal. 
With us the lynx is rarely found near settle¬ 
ments or near the seashore, while the wildcat 
is rarely found twenty miles from salt water 
and often comes' into large towns. I have known 
several killed in the heart of Bangor, and when 
in St. John, N. B., some forty years ago, was 
told that three had been killed in King’s Square 
and the graveyard the previous winter. 
As there seems to be some difference of opin¬ 
ion among waiters as to the courage of these 
animals, I will give my experience. 
At the time when I was born, something over 
seventy years ago, my father was one of the 
largest buyers of furs in eastern Maine; and, 
as in those days each hunter himself brought 
in his own catch, I had, when quite young, 
handled hundreds of lynx skins and heaid those 
MANLY HARDY. 
who caught them give their opinion of the 
animal. I well remember a hunter, named A. 
P. Willard, who had been out with a partner, 
named Daniel Crockett, bringing in some twenty 
at one time and what he said : "I choked every 
one of those beasts to death with my bare hands 
except that biggest one. I used to get Brother 
Daniel to go in front and plague one and then 
I would jump on his back and choke him. One 
day that big one was in the trap and I told 
Daniel it was his turn to choke this one. • After 
I got Daniel mounted I just got my hands on 
the trap springs and let him out. I stood back 
to see fair play. I kept telling Brother Daniel 
to hang to him, and that if he lost him he would 
have to pay for the skin. Part of the time 
Brother Daniel was atop and part of the time 
the lucivee was atop. I tell you the crust did 
fly terribly; but Brother Daniel coopered him.” 
The man called Brother Daniel was one of the 
smallest men I ever knew, weighing not much 
if any over a hundred pounds. 
My first personal experience with lynx began 
when I was fourteen years old. I had made a fox 
bed about a mile from' home and had got a fox 
baited and I teased my father until he went out 
and set a trap for me. It wras clogged to a clog 
some two feet long and a dry mullein stalk.was 
fixed upright in the chain so that one could fell 
whether the -trap was gone without going near 
the -bed. The trap was set on Saturday. It 
snowed all day on Sunday, and on Monday there 
was over a foot of solid damp snow. As soon 
as it was' light enough to see I started to look 
at my trap. The mullein stalk was gone. On 
digging 1 found that my trap also was gone. On 
three sides w r ere wide fields ; on the fourth, some 
twenty rods away, was a piece of tall growth 
inclosed by a Virginia fence. Thinking that nay 
fox would go to the woods I climbed the fence 
and began following along it on the woods side. 
I had gone but a short distance when suddenly, 
from under the snow, a large gray animal rose 
up and growled at me. I had never seen a lynx 
alive before, and besides this, being small and 
sickly, and an only child, I had always been a 
mother’s boy and had never been in quarrels 
like most boys; but I had heard all of the real 
hunters say that a lynx was of no account. So 
I .broke off some two feet of a rotten birch and 
tried to strike him. The stick broke and the 
lynx landed with his free right paw on my .shoul¬ 
der and his face close to mine. The next minute 
we were apart. I think we both must have 
jumped back at the same time. I searched the 
old cedar fence until I found a crack that I 
could get my fingers into and tore out a sliver 
and killed the lynx. There was no fight at all. 
I was not excited, either while killing him or 
after. I know that I had quite a hard time 
carrying him home through the deep snow, and 
he proved to be about as large as they ever 
grow in Maine, weighing twenty-seven # pounds. | 
And right here I will say that newspaper re¬ 
ports greatly exaggerate the weight of both 
lynxes and wildcats. I once read an account 
of a lynx which weighed 109 pounds, and a lynx 
or a wildcat which will not weigh sixty pounds 
is of • no account in a newspaper story. One 
winter I had the accurate weight of ten, all j 
large, and the heaviest * weighed twenty-five 
pounds. I have weighed many others and have 
never seen one weigh more than my first, while 
kittens, in winter, weigh ten to' twelve. pounds. 
As for some thirty years I was shipping furs 
to New York and later to London/ I have 
handled many hundreds of skins and think thirty j 
pounds the extreme weight of any Maine lynx, 
although I have had skins from the north side 
of the Baie Chaleur which were larger than any 
taken in Maine and some might weigh thirty-five 1 
to forty pounds. 
Our wildcats weigh nearly like lynx; if any 
difference a trifle heavier. There was one 
mounted in Bangor which was said to weigh 
forty-two pounds, but I have never been able j 
to be sure of its correct weight. One brought' j 
