Well, today I picked up something on the unusual side of things again,... a double ear-tagged lynx. I didn't even notice this until I had already dispatched it and was loading it up,.... when I saw this light-blue plastic thing hanging out of it's left ear. And after examining it carefully,... then I saw that it also had another tag in it's right ear,... this one is dark gray. There are no numbers or any other markings on the tags except for the name CORPLUS on the inside of the back half of each tag, which I assume is the name of the manufacturer of the tag. The two halves of each tag swivel, so each "flag" can rotate 360°. With no ID markings on the tags, I would assume that this lynx is color-coded, as that would be the only way to differentiate this one from any others that might be tagged in a similar way. Light blue and dark gray would imply that other colors were also used. There is no evidence that this lynx had ever worn a collar.

This is the 3rd lynx now that I have caught in my life that was tagged/collared,... and that activity has never happened in my area of Alaska,... so this one, like the others, has apparently moved in, or was passing thru, from somewhere else. The first tagged lynx I caught was in the early-mid '80's, as best as I can remember, and had originated from the Kenai Peninsula. (400+ miles from me in a "straight" line). It was both ear-tagged (only one yellow tag in it's right ear, with the number "668" or "899"), and wearing a radio collar. That one was caught maybe a hundred feet away from where I caught this one today. To catch two tagged lynx over 30 years apart, in virtually the same set, would make me wonder if this area is a natural travel/passage route for at least lynx when they are looking for better hunting grounds,... or whatever it is they are looking for.

A year ago last fall, a good friend of mine had a lynx show up in his yard that was trying to kill his ducks & chickens,.... and he noticed that it was wearing a collar,... so instead of shooting it, he somehow managed to catch it in a dipnet and locked it up in an empty chicken coop. Anyway, it turned out that that one had come from Canada. So, I am posting this in order to attempt to find out who tagged this lynx, when-where, and to give them this info, as without a radio collar, they will have no way of knowing the fate of any of their tagged participants unless someone like me catches one & reports it to someone. This seems like a rather low-budget and low-success way of doing things in this day & age, but what do I know. I think Canada does more of this sort of thing than Alaska does,... so I'm hoping that someone might recognize this particular mode of tagging and study of lynx,... and can let me know, so I can report where one of your AWOL students met his Waterloo,....









This was the tagged-collared lynx I caught in the '80's. On that particular year, our lynx season was closed, so all I could do was snap a couple pictures and turned it loose. After I reported what I had caught to my local ADF&G, we jumped in an airplane the next day with a tracking antenna and flew all day trying to re-locate it, but apparently the battery in it's collar had gone dead.

Cool! That is very interesting that you caught two 30 years apart in the same area! I caught my first collared lynx this year. It was collared by Fish and Wildlife (Feds) not the State. I also heard that UAF may have been doing some tagging/collaring but I don't know any in your area just heard they were doing it near Minto Flats. I called Fish and Game and they said it wasn't theirs but put me in touch with the point person for Fish and Wildlife. Here is a picture of mine.

Dave,

Wonder if its the NPS that is tagging cats? ADFG should know if they issued a permit to the feds to conduct the tagging.

Or is there a chance they came across the border? I had a client shoot a tagged wolf one time in GMU 26. It had ear tags that had been put on by the Canadian F&W Service, way over in NWT, near the Rat River. Wolf had come from there, across the YT and all the way to AK. (We obviously need to build that WALL...!)

Pete

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi9rNPC6cLfAhXNpYMKHU6VBDUQFjABegQICBAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adfg.alaska.gov%2Findex.cfm%3Fadfg%3Dwildlifenews.view_article%26articles_id%3D807&usg=AOvVaw1icbWtmupsbHT8NCkeCRJ5
so this would be those wanders, Menzies is one of the researchers I believe on snowshoe rabbits/ lynx


clickable link:

http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=807

Interesting stuff Wolverine Bait !! Thanks !! Lets us know if you find out about it !

You might check with the Tetlin Refuge people....

https://www.fws.gov/uploadedFiles/Northwest%20Boreal%20Lynx%20Project.pdf

Although I see no mention of ear tags after a quick skim of the paper.

Thats something else catching two different tagged lynx so many years apart in roughly the same set location.

I had no idea lynx moved so many miles when their primary food source was doing well, good reading on that link Northof50!

Well, it appears that this mystery lynx's origins have been determined. After I called my local ADF&G office in Glennallen and told them what I had caught, they put out the word around the state and into Canada,.. and the group in the Yukon Territory doing a lynx study identified this lynx as one of theirs,... "Mowgli",... the same group that had collared "Max", that my good friend had show up in his yard a year or two ago.

Mowgli was first captured in Nov 2017, at Kloo Lake in the Yukon, and both collared and ear tagged. They lost contact with this lynx 2 months later, in January 2018,.. at which time the batteries must have gone dead, since a lost collar should still put out a signal. But, it probably lost it's collar last winter at some point as well, since there is no indication that this lynx ever had a collar this winter. Since Max had a collar, but no ear tags, and Mowgli has ear tags (with no ID of any kind), and no collar, I didn't think that they would have come from the same agency, so I asked about this. And they said that the reason Mowgli has ear tags, is because they have recently increased their use of trail cameras in their lynx studies, and a collar alone doesn't allow them to identify which lynx they are looking at/capturing on their cameras,... so the color-coding is all they need,... no printed ID on the tag was necessary for that. But they said, because of when things happen like Max and Mowgli getting out of Dodge and heading for Alaska, they will probably incorporate some sort of ID on the ear tags in the future to make it easier for someone to figure out where that lynx came from,... and for them to find out where they went. I kept the ear tags on the pelt,... not sure why,... just seemed like the right thing to do. Kloo Lake, Yukon,... to Chitina, Alaska,.. is somewhere between 400-500 miles,... in less than one year.

Thanks for the update!

That's pretty cool. Long way for a cat to travel.

Assuming it is a male?

The more we learn the less we know.

I'm wondering if your location is on a traditional dispersion corridor? I don't think it's a coincidence when two long-distance travelers show up in the same area. There's an area on the NWT / Alberta / BC border that I saw some research on and it's a major dispersion corridor for lynx, wolverine, and who knows what else. Thanks for the great story and follow up