making homemade lures

[coondogintenn]

anyone in here know how to make lures,dont wanna spend any money on lures if you can make them,thanx,trent,aka,coondog

[Asa Lenon]

There are probably hundreds of lure and bait formulas that will work to harvest some animals.  However, if some didn't work better than others scores of commercial lure makers could not have survived for as long as they have.  Good lures DO NOT cost, they pay off at the furbuyer!!!  The cost of good lures is only a minor fraction of one's trapline expenses. Good lures could triple one's harvest, poor lures could ruin one's entire trapline and efforts while the expenses were still piling up.  Just my opinion!  Ace

[RdFx]

Asas' comments on lure  are the results of long hard hours on traplines and lure making shed.  As Asa said lures are the cheapest  part of your trapping expenses and can be one of the leading things to help you harvest furbearers providing the rest of your trapline  methods are in line with the animal you are trapping.  One can waste hundreds if not thousands of dollars trying to make ones own lures with out proper information.  I would buy   my first lures and then as you gain experience and time on trapline experiment with making your own.  Also what works sometimes in one area doesnt in another or  the improper use of a lure by a trapper causes  furbearers to sometimes shy from a certain smell.  Then you have to resort to another lure or else use blind or natural sets.

[OldCoon]

:-)    Making lure is more than just mixing a few ingredients together like a kitchen recipie.    Lure making is a step by step process.  All steps must be done correctly, aged and blended just right before the final product is compounded and bottled.

I dabbled in lure making years back.  Some of my lures wern't so good, others were  good but none were great.  

One thing that becomes obvious when you make your own lure is that unless you use great quanities it doesn't pay.   Making good lure requires top ingredients and additives.   You don't buy some crap out of a grocery store and/or drug store, mix em together and presto= lure.

Like the others said, at the present cost of lure it's one of the cheapest expenses for the trapper.

Now all that being said, let me add this.   Most all commerically manufactured lures very probably started out as someone's "home brew" for their own personal use.  Go ahead, make your lure.   Who knows you may be the next Herb Lenon, Stan Hawbaker, EJ Dailey or Russ Carman.

[Asa Lenon]

Good points Old Coon!  There is nothing wrong with one experimenting with their own concoctions as long as they ease into it slowly  for their own gratification, not just an attempt to save a few dollars.  Like you said, Herb Lenon and the other premiere lure makers started at some point.  My Dad started by some advice from a Uncle along with eagerly questioning the best trappers of that time.  This allowed him to start out using a base that was already proven with time and just kept adding and subtracting other ingredients over time until he got each formulas perfected.  As far a saving money goes, I could give trappers a list of all the ingredients, along with the step by step process for each formula and they would soon find that it would cost them more to make these lures on a limited scale than to buy them already made.  This is not to mention all of the work and odor asscoicted with the lure making process.  One would have to live where the nearest neighbor is a considerable distance or they would get a lot of odor complaints.  When one starts rendering fish for oil or pouring pure skunk musk into a formula, it can be smelled for a long distance.   :-) Ace

[Wackyquacker]

So Asa, please email your list and step by step process. :twisted:

[Asa Lenon]

Wackyquacker:  Here is a good coyote lure formula for you to get started on;  In a one gallon jug, begin with a base of boiled down sap from the Jujube tree.  Add 8 ozs of oil of eel blended well with 1 pint rhinosauros urine, two tbsp ground eye teeth of an East Indias Dodo bird, ten drops of musk from the man eating toad, three livers from sizable salamanders, ten black bear tails well decomposed, ten ground hummingbirds and thirty goose berries all blended together for several hours, then shake...shake...shake for at leat a week, bury ten feet under ground for at least three years (no peeking), dig up, carefully open jug and add 3 garter snakes whole, close lid again bury for two more years.  Dig up and apply 10 drops 10" behind  trap.  Good luck or i'll sell you some already made for pocket change.  Ace

[Wackyquacker]

...bout those humingbirds; can I substitute skeeters?

[Asa Lenon]

:grin: No Wacky, but one can substitute  5 Duck Billed Platypus bills, well pulverized and aged another two years.  Ace

[RdFx]

I knew it all along Ace has been using foreign ingrediants.  Australian ingrediants to attract canines.  Should have known that with all those dingos over there!!!

[Wackyquacker]

Say RedFx have ya noticed that our old pal Asa has a habit of sayin we couldn't make his stuff work even if he gave us the list and instructions.  This is the second time he's pulled this act on us in less than a year.  I know for a fact he isn't usin humin birds cause he's too dang old to catch em.  And another thing, every body knows you can't grind platypus bills...they'er like rubber when they dry.  I sure hope he ain't losin it in the head...know what I mean! :roll:

[RdFx]

Naw Ace is just sniffen too much  pure quill and maybe rubbing some  genuine tonquin behind his ears.  You know  he keeps a rubbing pole in his fur shed coated with bvr castor and he claims he always has a itchy back and is giving the pole a rub a dub dub LOL>  Heh heh.