I'll bet most Alaska trappers have pretty much the same experience with lynx as I do. Most of them never move or make a sound. They just sit there and wait for the lights to go out. Very docile. I know of one instance where a cat shredded the coat and pants of a TMAN member.
I think it's entirely possible that fisher are taking the occasional lynx . When you consider that an ermine will attack a critter many times his size, why wouldn't another member of the weasel family do the same ?
But as I said above, when you can show 12 instances in 12 years it isn't a very strong case for saying that this is a regular occurrence
There is some confusion here by the national geographic article that someone posted. My information is from the report posted in the Journal of Wildlife Management. I think the snow storm info is only found in the Nat. Geo article. I find it interesting that more than 75% of the collared lynx died during the study and 20 % of those were killed by fisher. The study area was in about 3% of the area known as The North Maine Woods. It is entirely possible the fisher are killing dozens of lynx in Maine each year. Legal trapping has killed two in the past few years & under the terms of the "incidental take permit" if a third lynx is killed by legal means trapping in Maine will be stopped. Bottom line: trappers kill two and fisher kill more so the government makes all trapping more difficult with special regulations. They also make special regulations for marten/fisher trapping that make it very difficult to trap said animals.
From the journal:
"we captured 187 lynx (83 females, 104 males) and equipped
85 with radio-collars (41 females, 44 males) between 1999
and 2011. The mean weight of adult male and female lynx
was 11.3 kg (range¼8.2–15.0 kg, n¼101) and 9.0 kg
(range¼7.0–10.5 kg, n¼58), respectively. We documented
the mortality of 65 lynx including 61 collared lynx, 1
unmarked kitten of a collared female, and 3 ear-tagged lynx.
We determined that 18 lynx were killed by predators, 17 died
of starvation, 17 from undetermined causes, 12 from human
factors (e.g., vehicle collisions), and 1 from hyperthyroidism
(Table 3). We determined that fishers had killed 14 lynx (9
females, 5 males) and likely killed 2 additional lynx (2
females). We could not determine the species of predator for
the remaining 2 lynx (1 female, 1 male; Table 4).
Thirteen of the 14 lynx killed by fishers were adults with
established home ranges, and weights and bone marrow
indicated that these lynx were healthy or in fair condition"