Got to get me lynx b'y! The biggest this trapper has seen in 5 decades

Dan Stanford caught the biggest lynx of his five-decade career last Thursday. He's estimating it to be about 45 pounds. (Dan Stanford/Facebook)

Imagine you're walking through the woods, snow glistening on the ground and birds chipping from above.

And then, you see a lynx the size of a bear cub.

After five decades as a trapper in central Newfoundland, Daniel Stanford thought he had seen it all.

Turns out, he hadn't seen a 45-pound lynx.

On Thursday, Stanford followed a set of big tracks and found the larger-than-average cat in his snare out in the woods behind Mount Peyton, near Glenwood.

It was almost dark when he spotted the animal, and he was shocked at the size.

"Probably just died before I got there," Stanford said.

"All my lynx I gets throughout the years, I puts in my hockey bag, nothing to it. You know, you get 20 pounds, 30 pounds…"

But he couldn't even fit this one in the bag to transport out of the woods.

And when he had a chance to size it up, he said "I've never seen the length like this in my life."

When he holds it out, the lynx stretches from his chin to the floor.

"I'd say he's 45 pounds, easy."

Hazel Tubrett, Stanford's wife, said she cooks about 90 per cent of the game her husband brings home, excluding fox and otter.

Stanford is the cleaner and Tubrett is the cook.

But she said, to her, lynx is "one of the best wild meats you're going to eat," describing it as a mix between pork and chicken.

"Whatever you do with anything else you can do with a lynx," she said.

"You can bottle it as well … bottled and baked."

Tubrett lived in Labrador for a short time, where she said she learned a lot about curing and cooking meat.

"It's all good meat, it's all good and clean," she said, "it's not out eating garbage or anything like that."

"I don't see a thing wrong with anything that comes from the wild," Tubrett said.

Next week, Stanford is going out trapping beavers and otters. But for now, they're eating like kings and queens with their feed of lynx.

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