The chief food of the Canada lynx is the varying hare, which throughout the North periodically increases to the greatest abundance and holds its numbers for several years. During these periods the fur sales in the London market show that the number of lynx skins received increases proportionately with those of the hare. When an epizoötic disease appears, as it does regularly, and almost exterminates the hares, there is an immediate and corresponding drop in the number of lynx skins sent to market. This evidences one of Nature’s great tragedies, not only among the overabundant hares, but among the lynxes, for with the failure of their food supply over a vast area tens of thousands of them perish of starvation.
The Canada lynx has from two to five kittens, which are marked with dusky spots and short bands, indicating an ancestral relationship to animals similar to the ocelot, or tiger-cat, of the American tropics. The young usually keep with the mother for nearly a year. Such families no doubt form the hunting parties whose rabbit drives on the Yukon Islands were described to me by the fur traders and Indians of the Yukon Valley.
During sledge trips along the lower Yukon I often saw the distinctive broad, rounded tracks of lynxes, showing where they had wandered through the forests or crossed the wide, snow-covered river channel. Here and there, as the snow became very deep and soft, the tracks showed where a series of leaps had been made. Lynx trails commonly led from thicket to thicket where hares, grouse, or other game might occur. Canada lynxes appear to be rather stupid animals, for they are readily caught in traps, or even in snares, and, like most cats, make little effort to escape.
BOBCAT, OR BAY LYNX (Lynx ruffus and its subspecies)
The bay lynx, bobcat, or wildcat, as Lynx ruffus and its close relatives are variously called in different parts of the country, is one of the most widely distributed and best known of our wild animals. It is about two-thirds the size of the Canada lynx and characterized by much slenderer proportions, especially in its legs and feet. The ears are less conspicuously tufted and the tip of the tail is black only on its upper half. Bobcats range from Nova Scotia and southern British Columbia over practically all of the wooded and brushy parts of the United States except along the northern border, and extend south to the southern end of the high table-land of Mexico.
OPOSSUM
RACCOON
From the earliest settlement of America the bobcat has figured largely in hunting literature, and the popular estimate of its character is well attested by the frontier idea of the superlative physical prowess of a man who can “whip his weight in wildcats.” Although our wildcat usually weighs less than 20 pounds, if its reputed fierceness could be sustained it would be an awkward foe. But, so far as man is concerned, unless it is cornered and forced to defend itself, it is extremely timid and inoffensive.