lynx are back on the kenai

and the state is already saying it probably closes again next year.

A hunting and trapping season opens down there on December fifteenth and runs through the end of February. Trappers have no limit at all. Hunters can take two.

It covers game units seven and fifteen, which is most of the peninsula. That's the first real stretch like this in a while, because the season stayed shut until 2020 after the population bottomed out.

Lynx run on roughly a ten year cycle up here. Six years of harvest numbers is what convinced the state to open this one, and those same numbers say the population is heading back down.

So the state is opening a season and predicting in the same breath that it'll have to close the next one in 2027.

Here's the part worth writing down. The printed regulations booklet lists the opener as January first. That's wrong. December fifteenth is the real date, and two weeks of season is not a small thing to lose to a typo.

If you run a line anywhere down there, that's your window, and it may be the only one you get for a few years.

Ten year cycles have a way of closing doors quietly, and this one already has a date on it.