There are various methods of trapping them but the most common, as well as the best is to set the trap in an enclosure, with bait. I prefer to make the enclosures of split wood, placing the split side inward. I make the pen about three feet in height, about two and a half feet long, wide at the top and just wide enough to receive the trap at the bottom. The pen should be well roofed with evergreen boughs to protect the trap from the snow, and the trap should be just inside of the entrance. If there is snow on the ground, I make a bed of green boughs for the trap to rest on. It is not necessary to cover the trap but I prefer to do so. The bait should be placed on a stick in the back of the pen.
Rabbit and partridge is the best bait, but it must be fresh, as the lynx does not care for stale food. Some scent should also be used as the lynx's sense of smell is not so highly developed as that of some other animals. Beaver Castor is perhaps the best, but fish oil is much used by the western trappers. Muskrat musk is also good.
The trap should be fastened to a stout clog. I use a small spruce or balsam tree, about three inches thick at the butt and fasten the trap by stapling or by looping the chain around the clog, leaving some snags to prevent the chain from slipping over the end.
The rabbits are a great nuisance, they being found in great numbers in the northern swamps. The scent of the hands left there while setting the trap, also the fresh cutting, attracts the rabbit into the pen and it is sometimes difficult to keep the trap in working order until the lynx journeys by that way again. The best way I have found to keep them out of the trap is by dropping some dead brush in front of the enclosure, as the rabbits do not like to jump through the dead brush.
Squirrels and birds are also troublesome, and I have found it a good idea to place the bait well up under the roof of the pen so as to be out of sight of these creatures. I also place a small springy stick under the pan of the trap, which will sometimes prevent the squirrels and birds from springing it. I sometimes make a trap pen by standing up a number of small evergreen trees, cutting the boughs away on the inside. This is a very good method.
When lynx do not take bait well, some trappers make a long pen or passage, open at both ends and high enough so that the lynx can walk through easily. The trap is set inside and some beaver castor or other scent is placed on a stick in the passage. Others put scent on a piece of red cloth and fix it in a pen of brush, setting the trap in the entrance.
As the lynx's eye is more keen than its nose, I have found it a good plan to hang a rabbit skin from a string near the setting, so that it will swing about in the breeze. This will attract the animal for quite a distance, and is a good method to use when setting traps along the shore of a lake, as the lynx walks the ice and will sometimes pass outside of scenting distance of the trap.
Lynx are easily killed by a blow from a stick but when caught in small traps it is safer to shoot them, using a small caliber pistol or rifle. Another good way is to choke them by tieing a snare to the end of a ten or twelve foot pole. Slip the snare over the animal's head, draw it tight and hold the pole; the lynx will die in a very short time. The advantage of this method is in the fact that the skin is kept clean and free from blood.
The track of the lynx resembles that of the cat but is much larger. A large specimen will make a track three and a half inches in diameter and the length of step is from sixteen to eighteen inches.