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Only one set of tracks led away from the chaos in the snow. The lynx had eaten again. The tracker was elated, but he noticed suddenly that the late afternoon sun was casting long shadows on the snow. He was tired and growing hungry, and the lynx tracks headed next into a jumbled windfall. He would pick up the trail tomorrow. The lynx, unaware of the great interest in her tracks, lay several kilometres away. She stretched and rose from her day bed. The fading shadows announced dusk and another night of hunting. With a lot of luck and skill she would catch a hare again tonight. Lynx are such secretive creatures that the chances of directly observing their behaviour are slight. This makes the study of lynx habits a difficult prospect at the best of times. "You don't encounter lynx very frequently." says Stan van Zyll de Jong, curator of mammals at the National Museum of Natural Sciences. "They are very stealthy, wary creatures and they stay out of sight. You're fairly lucky when you see them."

Not only is the secretive and nocturnal nature of lynx a challenge to researchers, but the very habitat in which they live is a hostile one to man, particularly in the prime field season months of winter. Lynx live in the boreal forest, favouring the dense undercover of thickets and windfalls interspersed with bogs and rocky outcrops that provide prime habitat for the lynx's chief prey species, the snowshoe hare. In summer lynx move easily through the dense undergrowth leaving virtually no tracks and making it next to impossible to track them. But in winter when the snow is on the ground their tracks are easily seen and men on snowshoes can penetrate into the deep woods in search of them. In doing so researchers have reconstructed a great deal of what we know about lynx today. The job of reconstruction is never easy in the lynx's difficult terrain; lynx are high hill cats, fond of following a ridge, and their range, for a man on foot, is large. "It may take lynx three to six days to cover their home range." says Bill Koonz, a biologist with the Manitoba Department of Natural Resources. "They generally make a circular pattern over that time period. When you're tracking a lynx you'll come up to a number of scent posts where they've urinated on a stick, you'll find places where they've defecated, you'll find spots where they've rested and you'll come into contact with places where they've happened upon a hare and they've made a run at it." When hares are plentiful, lynx prosper as well. Their great dependency on the snowshoe hare has left them vulnerable to that animal's well known cyclic population fluctuations. Every nine to 12 years the population bullds up to an impressive peak and then crashes. In years when the hare population plummets the lynx are faced with grave hardships and starvation. The extraordinary degree of dependency of the lynx on the snowshoe hare (70 to 97 per cent of its diet) is not really unusual according to Stan van Zyll de Jong. The medium-sized lynx depends mostly on prey of medium size. The snowshoe hare is one of the few animals in the boreal forest that fit the bill, particularly in winter when many birds have fled south and most small mammals have sought shelter beneath the snow. When the hares crash there is a one to two year lag period before the lynx population responds and begins itself to decrease. Three, four or five years can pass when no young survive their first winter. "Females still continue to breed but the young just don't survive. Some of the females may re-absorb the fetuses, some of them may not even attempt to feed their young," notes Bill Koonz. Lynx in a starving state will resort to any possible prey. Ernest Thompson Seton describes a lynx that had spent some time crouched on a log watching a beaver hole in the ice. When the beaver crawled out to feed on some nearby willows the lynx sprang, grabbing the beaver as it plunged back into the water. Both lynx and beaver disappeared beneath the ice -- the lynx forever. Lynx can and do kill deer, although infrequently, usually by lying in wait on an overhanging limb. They drop down on the unsuspecting prey, normally delivering a quick and lethal bite to the animal's neck. Fox are rarely prey. but the age-old cat-dog rivalry can spark a chase. A fox, on firm footing, can easily outrun a lynx. But in deep snow, the fox's thin legs and small feet can plunge him in snow up to his belly. The panicked bounding and the effort to run intensify the sinking, and the fox is doomed. The lynx needs only to trot with ease over the snow, gradually closing the distance. Yet the tables are turned against the lynx when speed is required. The lynx is not particularly swift over longer distances, and stories of men outrunning lynx are common. "I was eye-witness of one of these exploits." wrote Ernest Thompson Seton. "Since the creature can be run down on hard ground, it is not surprising to learn that men on snowshoes commonly pursue it successfully ... it requires half an hour to an hour, there must be soft snow, and the lynx must be scared so he leaps; then he sinks; if not scared he glides along on his hairy snowshoes, refuses to tree, and escapes in thick woods, where the men cannot follow quickly."