Lynx in a foot trap!

Wednesday afternoon my trapping partner came into the office in the afternoon and asked if I wanted to go and check traps.  Even though I had fixed my hair and put some make up on, I was game!  Good thing I was because I finally got to see a live lynx.  We were heading up Rabbit Creek and saw some lynx traps go off into the tundra towards our other traps.  Lynx don't normally wander off into the tundra.  We had traps to check though so we left off following the tracks and went to go check the set up Rabbit Creek.  Nothing.

Lynx in a foot trap

Gregg was letting me lead because saw a ton of ptarmigan tracks in the willows.  I'm not a very good leader.  I'm not ever sure of where I'm going or what I'm doing.  Gregg doesn't seem to mind though.  I often wonder if he's thinking, where the hell is this girl going?, when he's following me.  Gregg saw about a dozen ptarmigan but I didn't see any.  We saw the lynx tracks again heading towards one of our traps.  I was looking for ptarmigan but Gregg saw something move by the tree with the trap next to it.  We drove over and sure enough the lynx was caught!  It was so neat to see his tracks and follow him to the trap.  Definitely a cool experience.

This is my favorite picture of him

I walk around behind him and startled him out of the little bit of brush that he was hiding in and then Gregg put a snare around his neck and strangled him.  It's always sad.  It's the one part that I don't like.  But I see the necessity of it.  And I see the value in strangling rather than shooting. The lynx was the only animal that we caught on Wednesday.  He was still warm by the time we got home, so I was able to skin him that night.  It made for a long night, but the skinning is another post altogether and this time, it'll finally include pictures.

Look at them teeth!