The collect-with-one-energy-left trick hasn't worked to spawn a lynx for me. What HAS worked, 3 times, is to collect from cows until a fangbeast spawns, slay the fangbeast, and then immediately collect from Old Thomas. (Although those 3 lynxes from OT only dropped 2 pelts each, that's better than nothing.) My other collections from OT have been empty, and NOTHING has worked to spawn a lynx from my mines.
I don't know if it's slaying a fangbeast that matters; or if it's simply that when conditions in my kingdom are such that a fangbeast will spawn from cows, then conditions are also right for a lynx to spawn from OT. S8's spawning algorithm is obviously very complex. I think that when PikaSquirrel and others desk-check the algorithm, they're overlooking some variable or variables that apply to most of the posters on this thread.
I also switched from playing on my Galaxy phone to my wife's iPad (thanks for SW's hub post #3 on switching devices), that Android-Apple change may have also been a factor. I wonder if the same spawning algorithm is used for those fullscreen popups with the childish graphics, advertising other S8 games, that started appearing a few weeks ago -- I wish I had a lynx for every one of those annoying popups.