In dense forest corners you can find big rounded tracks left by a lynx, a feline predator.
A lynx is the same size as an average dog, its length is not more than 3.28 feet, its weight is about 40 pounds. It looks very interesting: a haughty look, thin tufted ears. Hind legs are very long, tail looks as if docked, paws look very wide. A bony long-legged lynx is better than a wolf; it is adapted to movement on the deep snow. Its thick-downy feet sink quietly, do not drag and do not draw on the snow. However, living in a couple or family till the youngs have not separated, during winter crossings lynxes move in file, stepping precisely after the leading lynx. It’s not a caution for fear to give away their number to enemy, but a common way that preserves forces when moving on very friable snowdrifts.
Tufts on the ears of lynxes – are not just an ornament, but an antenna, which helps the animal to hear even the lowest sounds. If you cut the tufts off, the hearing of lynx will become dull at once.
Winter hunting area of a couple is 20-25 sq. kms. While crossing they always choose places densely inhabited by mountain hares. Mountain hare is the main prey of lynxes. Every lynx eats up 1 hare for 4 days at the average. It hides the debris of unfinished hare under the windfall and settles for a rest close by so that to eat up the prey later. In days of famine lynx feeds on carrion and when there is an intense extinction of mountain hares in vast area it moves on ten and hundred miles, getting into open spaces and outskirts of cities.
Day crossings of lynx are rather long. Due to its sharp sight, hearing and great caution it can avoid meeting a human being. A naturalist is able to get to know about lynx’s habits only on its trails.
Lynx hunts early in the morning and towards evening, always on the previously marked territory. Males are not so jealous of their areas and tolerate intrusion of another male, although both of them keep off each other. Females are no so patient. If another female drops into her territory, there will be fight.
In places where reindeer dwell lynx keeps following the herds closely. In forests poor in big game lynx hunts not only hares but also voles, partridges and wood grouses. It often kills its prey even if it is satiated. There were cases when hunters following lynx’s trails found a fox, killed and left by the lynx.
Lynx’s pace is about 1.3 feet. Rounded footprints are about 0.3-0.4 feet in length and width. The traces of right and left paws do not lie in a straight chain, like fox’s or wolf’s traces, but in a broken line. In summer fur on feet comes out and footprints of bare subunguis can be seen on a trail. Like all cats lynx has retractile claws which do not leave trails.
All lynxes are good at swimming and tree-climbing. The latter often proves fatal to them for it is easy to shoot a lynx driven on a tree.
Lynx is known in Kamchatka no more than 70 years. Its appearance on the peninsula was related to a large number of mountain hares. In 1936 a record number of skins – 84 thousand - were made in the Kamchatskaya Region. Evidently, a large number of hares in treeless landscapes of Parapolsky vale made it possible for the beast to surmount inhabitation alien for it. For the first time lynx was recorded on the South of Kamchatka in 1939. At present lynx can bee seen in all regions of Kamchatka, but its number is small.