Within the past few days Anders and I amongst with about 20 other guys from our municipality have been out hunting scandinavian lynx.

The hunt is quite demanding. The terrain is rough, steep mountainsides with deep snow. We're only allowed to shoot 4 lynx within 6 municipalities, so it's a race amongst many hunting teams to get them first. After a few days with no luck it finally turned our way.

Our neighbours in south got one yesterday (actually they needed a litle help from "our side" of the border when the shooter was one from our team). Today another friend of us were the lucky one. The cat was a female about 17 kg.

Now there's only 1 left of the quota of 4. Hopefully we'll get the last one tomorrow


Espen with his first lynx




The one from yesterday

Trude with her first lynx

Anders..feel free to add pictures

good job!!!

hope to shoot one in the future.

bara skjutit sel i Vesterålen än

Oh,, nice one
Gratulations

Beautiful animal. Congratulations to the lucky hunter.

How does the hunt work? Do you set-up ambush points or is it a kind of drive? Tell us some more when you get a chance.


Thanks for the report and pictures.

stu

quote:

Originally posted by Stu C:
How does the hunt work? Do you set-up ambush points or is it a kind of drive? Tell us some more when you get a chance.

Hi stu!

At the end it's a kind of a drive. This hunt very much depend on the weather conditions, whether it's snow or not. Because theese animals wander around alot it's not easy to find them unless you got snow to track them down. They are very shy and hide in rough terrain. The steeper the better

AS soon as the sun rise and it gets light we go out on different location within our hunting area (the whole municipality) looking for tracks. We are alot of guys who cover 15-20 locations at the time. When we look for tracks we walk "lines" through the terrain to find out whether or not a lynx has crossed during night. Where we hunt this normally means walk from the bottom of a mountainside to the top. If you find tracks you follow them 3-400 meters to determine the direction an how many animals. Often you see only one track, but if you follow them over a short distance they often part into 2,3 or 4 tracks (female with cubs). Grown up male animals walk alone.

Now you do another "line" further ahead to cut of and find out whether or not the lynx has crossed. If not, you pretty much know that you have a lynx between the last line and the track you first found.
Then it's time to call for backup, and do what we call to "circle" the animal. 15-20 guys walk out and do a circle around where we found the tracks and the last line. The smaller circle the better. Now the action start.
2-3 guys with dogs follow the tracks to find where the lynx is hiding during daytime. They rest through the day and hunt during night. When you're close you let the dogs go, and hopefully they will chase the lynx in direction of one of the guys around. Sometimes the lynx climb a tall tree and you get to shoot it down unless it's dark before you get there.

Hope this makes sense. It takes alot of time and lots of waiting before you actually get the chance to shoot.

Very interesting, that sounds like a real joint effort and a lot of work. Do lynx ever respond to a predator call?

quote:

Originally posted by Boghossian:
Very interesting, that sounds like a real joint effort and a lot of work. Do lynx ever respond to a predator call?

Yes they do...atleast that is what I've heard. Never tried myself. Because of the low quota of only 4 individuals you don't get to experiment with other methods before the quota is filled.

Wow those are some beautiful cats. Your lynx are much larger than ours. kind of makes me a little jealous. Thats OK our moose are bigger I guess it evens out in the end. Heres one of my little Alaskan lynx.

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Here's a Bob cat I shot in the mountains of California. This is a little bigger but still looks only half the size of your Norwegian Lynx.

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Good luck on that last one.

Good job Geir, sounds like a real team effort

I'll have to give this type of hunting a try.

Akshooter,
Nice cats you got there aswell. A big male lynx here might be about 25 kg, which is a big cat Don't worry....your moose is bigger for sure!!

Jonathan,
You sure should try! Here are some information regarding lynx hunting in your area i guess:
http://www.fylkesmannen.no/hov...?m=4770&amid=3485504

Great pictures, Mr. G!

I might add that the hunt starts with hiking up and down steep terrain, getting all wet in sweat. In the afternoon one settle down, still wet, and stay calm for several hours in sub zero temperatures. A comfy hunt for sure!

Jonathan, you're welcome any time! But I'm not sure how much longer we'll have lynx on quota this year.

quote:

Originally posted by Mr. G:
Jonathan,
You sure should try! Here are some information regarding lynx hunting in your area i guess:
http://www.fylkesmannen.no/hov...?m=4770&amid=3485504

Thanks for the link Geir, i'll dig a little deeper and see whats available locally. I've Spoken to fellow hunters from my terrain and they agree that we have big problems with the lynx, they have reduced the roe deer population severely in some places over the last few years. The numbers of roe deer taken are now in the single figures compared to 20's & 30's a few years back!

quote:

Originally posted by Anders:
Jonathan, you're welcome any time! But I'm not sure how much longer we'll have lynx on quota this year.

Hi Anders, thanks for the offer and good look with finishing off your quota, we can perhaps arrange something next season if I don't find anything local.

Nice!

I'm supposed to be in Sweden in 2 weeks for the opening of Lynx there.. but the state has still not decided whether there will be a season this year

Anyone know more that I on this ?