

Juty 27, 1907.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 



NATURAL DSTO 




Canada Lynx and Wildcat. 
Their Habits. 
BREWER, Maine, July 20.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: In complying with your request to 
write something of the habits of these animals, 
I will first say that it is extremely rare for any- 
one to see either of them unless treed by dogs 
or in traps. Those who have not had experience 
have no idea how seldom one sees any of the 
land fur-bearing animals in the Maine woods. 
From a canoe one may often have a chance ta 
see and watch moose and deer and occasionally 
a bear; also one may frequently see mink or 
otter, and on rare occasions a beaver; but in 
the woods it is very seldom that one sees either 
fisher, sable, lynx or wildcat. As an example 
of this, my partner and I were once traveling on 
lines of traps every day except Sunday for eight 
weeks. Game of all kinds was fairly abundant, 
and we trapped some of all kinds, but the only 
living animals we saw, except when in a-canoe, 
were one moose, one porcupine and a weasel. 
And yet we caught three bears in one trap quite 
near oyr home camp, and once, in a half day’s 
travel, | took out eight sable; my partner, at the 
same time, in a day’s travel, getting seven sable, 
a fisher, a beaver and a mink: 
The most lynx I ever knew any man seeing— 
except twice when droves were seen—were four. 
This man has been in the woods, at the very 
least, eight months of every year for over fifty 
years. I know of one other who once saw three 
lynx, but they were not all together. Some have 
seen one or two, while many men have.traveled 
the woods for years and never have seen one. 
I once was walking in a tote road, with my 
snowshoes on my rifle, when on turning a bend 
in the road, I saw a large lynx quite near, stand- 
ing with his fore paws on the deep snow and 
his hind feet in the road. While I was trying 
to get my rifle clear of the snowshoes he sprang 
into the brush, and that is the only fair sight 
I ever had of one out of a trap. 
Both lynx and wildcats live largely on rab- 
bits, which they catch, as all of the cat kind 
catch their game, by creeping to them. I have 
never seen any signs of their trying to run them 
down, as fisher do, but then ‘a fisher. although 
called the “fisher cat,” is not a cat, but of the 
weasel family, and Longfellow was perfectly 
correct when, in Hiawatha, he says: 
“And Ojeeb, the fisher weasel.” 

Lynx and wildcat also kill deer by creep- 
ing to them. A friend of mine, while following 
the track of a buck on the first snow, came to 
a place where he had crossed a part of an open 
bog to a spruce island. Knowing the habit of 
deer to seek such places to lie down he felt 
quite sure of his buck till he came to the track 
of a lynx which had come in ahead of him and 
taken the deer track. Wishing to see if the 
lynx had killed the deer he followed and, when 
near the island, saw the lynx peering out at him 
from under a low bush. As he thought his 
chance for getting the deer was gone he shot 
the lynx, and on following the tracks for a few 
rods found the deer dead. The lynx had crept 
to him while lying down, and jumping on his 
neck, held him down until he killed him by biting 
his throat. In several other cases where I have 
known lynx to kill deer they have crept to them 
and bitten their throats. 
Lynx have a very long stride, and in walking 
place one foot directly in front of the last, their 
huge paws making a track nearly as large as 
that of a small bear. Though they usually walk 
with their long nails drawn in, as a house cat 
does, I have seen where one walked on a log 
in a very light snow where the nails showed 
plainly in the short velvety moss on the log. 
Lynx rarely trouble log traps set for sable or 
fisher, but in 1858, while hunting on the head of 
Little Tobique, in New Brunswick, on the four- 
mile portage between Spring Lake of Tobique 
and the upper Nepisiquit, one morning I found 
the boxing pulled out of several traps. As there 
was no snow I had no tracks’ to help tell what 
had done it, but I found the marks of sharp 
teeth in the wood, and several white hairs three 
or four inches long stuck in the fir balsam of 
the chips he had pulled out. I was puzzled to 
tell what animal had any such long white hairs 
and carefully saved several of them in my wallet 
to show to my partner. In coming back near 
night I found a-large lynx in a bear trap, and 
by comparing found that the white hairs came 
from the muffle under his throat. Fisher and 
bear often tear down wooden traps, and-I have 
had a wolf go out on a dam to get to an island 
and pull the boxing out of several traps though 
not touching the bait, but this is the only case 
in which I ever knew a lynx to do it. In no 
case did this one touch the bait after getting 
where he could see it. 
Lynx kill some partridges and probably some 
small mammals, although the only one I know 
of was found by my partner. He was crossing 
the foot of a frozen lake, as near the open out- 
let as he dared go. A lynx had gone the same 
way and he-was walking on the lynx track when, 
near the open water, he found where the lynx 
had run across a mink which had stood to fight 
or at least had not run away. The lynx had 
seized him by the neck, bitten him, dropped him 
and passed on. My partner took the mink and 
I saw the skin. 
I know that lynx make four different noises. 
All these are very much like the noises made by 
house cats only very much louder. They growl 
when in a trap just as a cat. does when trapped. 
Then there is a noise like cats fighting. This 
is a horrid noise and can be heard a long way. 
Then the lynx, when traveling, seeking a mate, 
makes a prolonged ‘‘yeouw” just as a house cat 
does under similar circumstances. Then they 
“mew” like a cat. Once very early one sum- 
mer morning while paddling along the shore of 
a lake toward the outlet, I heard on a ridge 
parallel to the lake a noise “between a loon’s 
call and a man’s halloo,”’ as the journal of the 
trip states. It was a noise I had never heard 
before. We heard it at intervals several times 
and thought it must be a man. On getting near 
the foot of the lake we turned up a stream which 
ran through low land with high grass on the 
banks, and I had just left the canoe to see what 
the chances were of getting over an old beaver 
dam, when I was surprised to hear my partner’s 
rifle. I found that he had heard a mew like a 
cat, only louder, and on. getting on his feet saw 

the head of a lynx some eight or ten feet above 
the ground on a broken down cedar. He fired 
and missed. There was then no doubt that it 
was he we had heard, as he was traveling to- 
ward his usual crossing place, when, hearing me, 
he had climbed this fallen tree to investigate. 
When in a trap lynx make very little attempt 
to escape. When you approach one in a trap 
he is usually crouched down quite low. If you 
poke him he will spring up and growl and some- 
times make a spring toward you; after that he 
usually contents himself with trying to get as 
far from you as he can. A weak trap or chain 
will hold one. The most I ever knew one to do 
in attempting to get away was to climb a large 
spruce carrying a maple pole eight or ten feet 
long and a couple of inches in diameter to which 
the chain was hitched. He-had to be shot and 
then the tree had to be climbed to untangle him. 
An otter or a raccoon in a few minutes would 
have chewed the pole into splinters and escaped. 
The lynx seems to be deficient in brains, He 
will often sit in a road and wait till men or 
horses get close to him, but he always runs. 
He always seems ugly enough to fight, but he 
never dares to. He will blunder into any kind 
of a trap if he happens to be hungry; at other 
times he will pass well-baited traps and take no 
notice. I have seen where they passed rabbits 
which had got into traps set for lynx and never 
even turned from their course to look at them. 
Mr. R. MacFarlane, formerly chief factor of 
the Hudson Bay Company, speaks of their regu- 
larly increasing. and decreasing in numbers about 
every ten years all over the immense territory 
covered by that company, so that while the aver- 
age collection was 20,208 for twenty-five years, 
it was once as low as 4,448 and once rose to 
76,550. We also find here in Maine and the 
Provinces that the number of lynx varies greatly. 
In the spring of 1861 my partner of 1859 and 
two others brought in thirty-four skins. They 
had only hunted lynx incidentally, as the skins 
brought a low price. It was only a few years 
later that I did not get a single skin from Maine, 
and it was several years more before I saw one 
taken in our State. 
Mr. MacFarlane’ gives the number of young 
as “from two to five, and not infrequently as 
many as six.’ I have no personal knowledge 
about this, but judging from wildcats I should 
think four the probable number, though it may 
vary. 
While wildcats resemble lynx in many of their 
habits, there is one point in which they differ 
widely: The lynx inhabits the deep woods while 
the wildcat lives mestly near the settlements, and 
probably the great majority of the wildcats now 
in Maine are not five miles from some house. 

GRAND COCHERE AT LOW TIDE—ALL 
THAT JS LEFT 
OF THAT WONDERFUL BIRD BREEDING ISLAND 
IN THE GULF, 

