The Arctic Prairies Part 9

CHAPTER XIV

RABBITS AND LYNXES IN THE NORTH-WEST

There are no Rabbits in the north-west. This statement, far from final, is practically true to-day, but I saw plenty of Lynxes, and one cannot write of ducks without mentioning water.

All wild animals fluctuate greatly in their population, none more so than the Snowshoe or white-rabbit of the north-west. This is Rabbit history as far back as known: They are spread over some great area; conditions are favourable; some unknown influence endows the females with unusual fecundity; they bear not one, but two or three broods in a season, and these number not 2 or 3, but 8 or 10 each brood. The species increases far beyond the powers of predaceous birds or beasts to check, and the Rabbits after 7 or 8 years of this are multiplied into untold millions. On such occasions every little thicket has a Rabbit in it; they jump out at every 8 or 10 feet; they number not less than 100 to the acre on desirable ground, which means over 6,000 to the square mile, and a region as large as Alberta would contain not less than 100,000,000 fat white bunnies.

At this time one man can readily kill 100 or 200 Rabbits in a day, and every bird and beast of prey is slaughtering Rabbits without restraint. Still they increase. Finally, they are so extraordinarily superabundant that they threaten their own food supply as well as poison all the ground. A new influence appears on the scene; it is commonly called the plague, though it is not one disease but many run epidemic riot, and, in a few weeks usually, the Rabbits are wiped out.

This is an outline of the established routine in Rabbit vital statistics. It, of course, varies greatly in every detail, including time and extent of territory involved, and when the destruction is complete it is an awful thing for the carnivores that have lived on the bunny millions and multiplied in ratio with their abundance.

Of all the northern creatures none are more dependent on the Rabbits than is the Canada Lynx. It lives on Rabbits, follows the Rabbits, thinks Rabbits, tastes like Rabbits, increases with them, and on their failure dies of starvation in the unrabbited woods.

It must have been a Hibernian familiar with the north that said: "A Lynx is nothing but an animated Rabbit anyway."

The Rabbits of the Mackenzie River Valley reached their flood height in the winter of 1903-4. That season, it seems, they actually reached billions.

Late the same winter the plague appeared, but did not take them at one final swoop. Next winter they were still numerous, but in 1907 there seemed not one Rabbit left alive in the country. All that summer we sought for them and inquired for them. We saw signs of millions in the season gone by; everywhere were acres of saplings barked at the snow-line; the floor of the woods, in all parts visited, was pebbled over with pellets; but we saw not one Woodrabbit and heard only a vague report of 3 that an Indian claimed he had seen in a remote part of the region late in the fall.

Then, since the Lynx is the logical apex of a pyramid of Rabbits, it naturally goes down when the Rabbits are removed.

These bobtailed cats are actually starving and ready to enter any kind of a trap or snare that carries a bait. The slaughter of Lynxes in its relation to the Rabbit supply is shown by the H. B.

Company fur returns as follows:

In 1900, number of skins taken 4,473 " 1901 " 5,781 " 1902 " 9,117 " 1903 " 19,267 " 1904 " 36,116 " 1905 " 58,850 " 1906 " 61,388 " 1907 " 36,201 " 1908 " 9,664

Remembering, then, that the last of the Rabbits were wiped out in the winter of 1906-7, it will be understood that there were thousands of starving Lynxes roaming about the country. The number that we saw, and their conditions, all helped to emphasise the dire story of plague and famine.

Some of my notes are as follows:

May 18th, Athabaska River, on roof of a trapper's hut found the bodies of 30 Lynxes.

May 19th, young Lynx shot to-day, female, very thin, weighed only 12 1/2 lbs., should have weighed 25. In its stomach nothing but the tail of a white-footed mouse. Liver somewhat diseased. In its bowels at least one tapeworm.

June 3d, a young male Lynx shot to-day by one of the police boys, as previously recorded. Starving; it weighed only 15 lbs.

June 6th, adult female Lynx killed, weighed 15 lbs.; stomach contained a Redsquirrel, a Chipmunk, and a Bog-lemming. (Synaptomys borealis.)

June 18th, young male Lynx, weight 13 lbs., shot by Preble on Smith Landing; had in its stomach a Chipmunk (borealis) and 4 small young of the same, apparently a week old; also a score of pinworms. How did it get the Chipmunk family without digging them out?

June 26th, on Salt Mt. found the dried-up body of a Lynx firmly held in a Bear trap.

June 29th, one of the Jarvis bear-cub skins was destroyed by the dogs, except a dried-up paw, which he threw out yesterday. This morning one of the men shot a starving Lynx in camp. Its stomach contained nothing but the bear paw thrown out last night.

These are a few of my observations; they reflect the general condition--all were starving. Not one of them had any Rabbit in its stomach; not one had a bellyful; none of the females were bearing young this year.

To embellish these severe and skeletal notes, I add some incidents supplied by various hunters of the north.

Let us remember that the Lynx is a huge cat weighing 25 to 35 or even 40 lbs., that it is an ordinary cat multiplied by some 4 or 5 diameters, and we shall have a good foundation for comprehension.

Murdo McKay has often seen 2 or 3 Lynxes together in March, the mating season. They fight, and caterwaul like a lot of tomcats.

The uncatlike readiness of the Lynx to take to water is well known; that it is not wholly at home there is shown by the fact that if one awaits a Lynx at the landing he is making for, he will not turn aside in the least, but come right on to land, fight, and usually perish.

The ancient feud between cat and dog is not forgotten in the north, for the Lynx is the deadly foe of the Fox and habitually kills it when there is soft snow and scarcity of easier prey. Its broad feet are snowshoes enabling it to trot over the surface on Reynard's trail. The latter easily runs away at first, but sinking deeply at each bound, his great speed is done in 15 or 6 miles; the Lynx keeps on the same steady trot and finally claims its victim.

John Bellecourt related that in the January of 1907, at a place 40 miles south of Smith Landing, he saw in the snow where a Lynx bad run down and devoured a Fox.

A contribution by T. Anderson runs thus:

In late March, 1907, an Indian named Amil killed a Caribou near Fort Rae. During his absence a Lynx came along and gorged itself with the meat, then lay down alongside to sleep. A Silver Fox came next; but the Lynx sprang on him and killed him. When Amil came back he found the Fox and got a large sum for the skin; one shoulder was torn. He did not see the Lynx but saw the tracks.

The same old-timer is authority for a case in which the tables were turned.

A Desert Indian on the headwaters of the Gatineau went out in the early spring looking for Beaver. At a well-known pond he saw a Lynx crouching on a log, watching the Beaver hole in the ice. The Indian waited. At length a Beaver came up cautiously and crawled out to a near bunch of willows; the Lynx sprang, but the Beaver was well under way and dived into the hole with the Lynx hanging to him. After a time the Indian took a crotched pole and fished about under the ice; at last he found something soft and got it out; it was the Lynx drowned.

Belalise ascribes another notable achievement to this animal.

One winter when hunting Caribou near Fond du Lac with an Indian named Tenahoo (human tooth), they saw a Lynx sneaking along after some Caribou; they saw it coming but had not sense enough to run away. It sprang on the neck of a young buck; the buck bounded away with the Lynx riding, but soon fell dead. The hunters came up; the Lynx ran off. There was little blood and no large wound on the buck; probably its neck was broken. The Indian said the Lynx always kills with its paw, and commonly kills Deer. David MacPherson corroborates this and maintains that on occasion it will even kill Moose.

In southern settlements, where the Lynx is little known, it is painted as a fearsome beast of limitless ferocity, strength, and activity. In the north, where it abounds and furnishes staple furs and meat, it is held in no such awe. It is never known to attack man. It often follows his trail out of curiosity, and often the trapper who is so followed gets the Lynx by waiting in ambush; then it is easily killed with a charge of duck-shot. When caught in a snare a very small club is used to "add it to the list." It seems tremendously active among logs and brush piles, but on the level ground its speed is poor, and a good runner can overtake one in a few hundred yards.

David MacPherson says that last summer he ran down a Lynx on a prairie of Willow River (Mackenzie), near Providence. It had some 90 yards start; he ran it down in about a mile, then it turned to fight and he shot it.

Other instances have been recorded, and finally, as noted later, I was eye-witness of one of these exploits. Since the creature can be run down on hard ground, it is not surprising to learn that men on snow-shoes commonly pursue it successfully. As long as it trots it is safe, but when it gets alarmed and bounds it sinks and becomes exhausted. It runs in a circle of about a mile, and at last takes to a tree where it is easily killed. At least one-third are taken in this way; 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 snow-shoes, refuses to tree, and escapes in thick woods, where the men cannot follow quickly.

CHAPTER XV

EBB AND FLOW OF ANIMAL LIFE

Throughout this voyage we were struck by the rarity of some sorts of animals and the continual remarks that three, five, or six years ago these same sorts were extremely abundant; and in some few cases the conditions were reversed.

For example, during a week spent at Fort Smith, Preble had out a line of 50 mouse-traps every night and caught only one Shrew and one Meadowmouse in the week. Four years before he had trapped on exactly the same ground, catching 30 or 40 Meadowmice every night.

Again, in 1904 it was possible to see 100 Muskrats any fine evening.

In 1907, though continually on the lookout, I saw less than a score in six months. Redsquirrels varied in the same way.

Of course, the Rabbits themselves were the extreme case, millions in 1904, none at all in 1907. The present, then, was a year of low ebb. The first task was to determine whether this related to all mammalian life. Apparently not, because Deermice, Lynxes, Beaver, and Caribou were abundant. Yet these are not their maximum years; the accounts show them to have been so much more numerous last year.