MANITOUWADGE, Ont. — An Ajax, Ontario man who happened upon a standoff between two lynx in the bush says it was the most amazing experience he's had in more than 20 years of hunting.
Ernie Stronge was in a party that was hunting north of Manitouwadge last week.
They were driving along a logging road when they encountered a work truck stopped along the road.
After the driver flagged them down, Stronge said, they pulled to the side, expecting to see a logging truck coming toward them.
"After a couple of minutes of waiting I rolled down the window to see what was going on. I heard hissing, looked over, and saw two lynx not twenty feet from my truck," Stronge said.
"The guy in front of me was recording it with his phone, so I started taking pictures too."
Stronge has posted the video of the noisy confrontation between the cats on Facebook.
"I've never seen anything like that. Just to see how nature actually works. It was kind of cool. I didn't know if it was a courting thing or if there was going to be a battle. It was amazing," he told Tbnewswatch in an interview.
Stronge said the lynx spent the next 10 minutes apparently trying to intimidate each other, but never got into a physical confrontation.
The standoff finally ended with one of the animals eventually disappearing into the bush, and the other – which Stronge presumed was the dominant one – walking a few hundred metres farther down the road before heading for cover.
Throughout the entire experience, he said, neither lynx appeared concerned about the nearby humans.
Last year, a Dryden man's video of an even more boisterous encounter between two lynx went viral, receiving millions of views.
