With all of the lure and bait choices available today, how do you choose one? The author breaks down what you should look for to make sense of all those scents.
By Toby Walrath
Let’s face it, there are about ten thousand lure and bait choices on the market these days, and we trappers who aren’t lure-making experts are left confused about what works and how it works.
In today’s market, the number of commercial baits and lures is staggering. Knowing when and how to use them can be even more confusing! Photo credit Toby Walrath.
Take any trapping supply catalog and check out the sections with baits and lures — the choices are staggering. Sometimes the short descriptions about the products can provide some clarity about their use, but they’re often more of a sales pitch than detailed information. Now, to be fair to our quality bait and lure makers out there, the advertisement space is limited and some lure makers do provide some good details about their lures. But, a lot is left to be desired when it comes to information about when, where and how to use many of the available products — especially for new trappers.
It’s vitally important for all trappers to understand lures, baits and how to use them throughout the changing seasons. Once we do, our sets will change and so will our catch rates. No matter what species you choose to pursue, and no matter when, there is a right way and a wrong way to use baits and lures.
For clarity’s sake, it is important to know that baits are generally made to trigger a hunger response. I say generally because some baits contain other ingredients that may not be food related, but still help get the target animals to commit and work the set. However, for the purpose of explaining usage, I will describe bait as something that our target species want to eat.
In contrast, a lure is designed to cause a response other than food. Lures may also include ingredients that will trigger a hunger response, but for the purpose of explaining usage, the term lure will be describing something other than food. These responses include territorial, sexual and curiosity responses. This is very important and impacts how, when and where we should use our lures.
Let’s get a few things sorted out before digging in to this confusing topic and not in order of importance, as each aspect of lure use is equally important.
First, some really good lures and baits are only really good during certain parts of the season, and will not perform as well during other times.
Second, the amount of lure you should use changes with temperature and weather.
Third, in order to get the most out of your baits and lures you must understand your target species as thoroughly as possible.
If we omit any one of these concepts when using bait and lure we cannot take advantage of their best elements.
Reason for the Season
We must know which part of the trapping season the lure was made for, what the temperature and weather is during that time of the year and when the breeding season for our target species is. For example, a gland lure designed to trigger a sexual response will not work well when it isn’t breeding season.
Imagine buying a lure designed for coyotes during February, but you planned an early November trapline and got skunked. You may come back cursing the lure — but it wasn’t the lure — rather it was the timing of the lure usage that resulted in a poor catch.
The first thing we often do as trappers is to question ourselves. We start thinking that we left too much scent, we need to clean our traps better or some other self-blaming failure. Instead of blaming yourself if your bait or lure isn’t working consistently, try different baits or lures.
Early Season
To illustrate, I typically begin trapping coyotes in late October and continue trapping through January. I start out with bait that is mild in odor and contains fruity edges. Afternoon temperatures are generally warm in late October (compared to January), and in many parts of the country coyotes are in a diet transition period and they are switching food sources from the plentiful summer varieties of vegetation to mostly meat.
The warm outside temperatures will help to carry the scent of mild bait. My goal in choosing mild bait to start with is to generate a hunger response without repelling any animals. Strong-smelling bait may be too powerful during this time of year and will work against you. As temperatures drop throughout November and into December, a more meat-based bait with stronger odor, perhaps with a skunky overtone, will become necessary to reach through the cold ground and into the air.
With so many commercial baits and lures available it can be pretty difficult to know how to use them. Keep the basics in mind to help sort through the choices and get more furbearers into your sets. Photo credit Kaden Walrath.
At this point, the fruity edges of the early season will not be as natural and the scent will be too mild for the weather. Now, this doesn’t mean that changing baits throughout the season is absolutely necessary, but I have noticed a definite increase in coyotes working my sets by using this strategy; mild baits early, stronger baits as it gets colder.
During this same time period I use gland lure at most of my dirthole sets and flat sets. In the early part of the season coyote family units are still intact. Any intruder during this time will likely be chased away, and any scent of an outsider will be investigated by every local coyotes.
At dirthole sets, I add a smear of coyote gland lure about the size of a kidney bean to the lip of the hole, and place about 2 tablespoons of a good mild bait into the hole.
Good gland lures made for the time of the year that you are trapping are excellent for simple flat sets, where a smear of gland lure is placed next to a concealed trap. A flat set can utilize gland lure and/or bait, but for this illustration I want to focus on lure usage.
I still add a squirt of coyote urine to flat sets with a little dribble over the trap bed. It is important to note that when making flat sets, packing the dirt around and inside the jaws until it is as close to the natural ground around is absolutely necessary to prevent coyotes from digging at the loose dirt. It is my opinion that most complaints from trappers about digging coyotes comes not from scent on the trap, but from loose dirt under their paws and poorly bedded traps.
The smell of fresh dirt and the consistency of loose dirt will generate a digging response all on their own. Making sure this unwanted response is avoided depends on packing the dirt around the bedded trap, otherwise your trap bed will become the focus of the set instead of the lure. The only place that there should be loose dirt at a flat set is directly under the pan.
If you can get the dirt around the pan packed in solidly, then using only a gland lure, feces or a squirt urine at a flat set will be excellent during the early part of the season because of a coyote’s natural tendency to need to know who is in their territory. With typical warm weather conditions early on, a very small pea-size amount of gland lure at a set is enough.
Late Season
During the early part of the season curiosity lures designed to pique the interest of coyotes will also work well because they are still in their home range and something new is interesting to them. As we approach late November, food becomes more important and pups are beginning to disperse to new areas. Everything is foreign to dispersed pups and suddenly those gland lures and interest lures you used with success earlier in the season won’t work as well. By December, pups are dispersing more and interest lures are going to work even less, and the same with gland lure. But, the temperatures are cold and they are hungry. Using a strong-smelling bait will be the best choice during this time.
The temperatures during January in my part of the country can be well below zero. Gland lures all but quit working and bait reigns supreme. But, I prefer a big carcass like beaver or several muskrat carcasses to really draw them in (the choices here are endless but check local trapping regulations before using meat baits). Just when things are looking bleak for lures and commercial baits, most trappers either quit trapping coyotes or have switched entirely to snares. Then the mating season begins.
Mating Season
February and March brings a major uptick in the effectiveness of gland lures — especially those designed for a sexual response. Since the temperatures are so cold, that pea-size gob of lure will need to be doubled or tripled in size in order to work.
If this seems complicated, a brief summary will help to bring it all together. Early-season baits for canines should be mild with fruity edges. Gland lures and curiosity lures used in very small amounts will work through October, but then pup dispersal and colder temperatures in November changes all of that. As December comes and it gets even colder, we have to change it up again with stronger meat baits and back off on curiosity and gland lures. Then ramp up our use of gland lures in late winter and back off on paste baits, but switch to big meaty carcasses.
More Than Just Coyotes
This same approach to understanding lure and bait usage can be applied to any species that we target. Take muskrats, for example. A good food lure will help put muskrats on stretchers like gangbusters in northern Idaho in November. By the time December rolls around those lures are worthless because everything is frozen. The first couple weeks after freeze-up is awesome because I can use chunks of potato on #110 triggers (a big bait) to get muskrats to eat. When the spring season rolls around, a good, musky gland lure will be really effective because it is the breeding season. In this case I move from food-based lures to baits and then to gland lure as the season changes.
Beavers are really responsive to a good quality food lure during the fall and spring, but gland lures in spring outperform anything else during late winter and early springtime. This is due to a beaver’s natural behaviors and breeding season timing.
Another example is marten. In early November, a sweet paste bait or call lure is really effective. This is because of their mainly vegetarian diet during the summer months. As the season progresses, a skunky lure and a big chunk of beaver meat is impossible to beat because a marten’s diet becomes nearly 100% meat.
Less is More
When it comes to lures, the idea that more is better is a major detriment to success. It takes very little lure for an animal to smell it. The concept of more is better has probably cost trappers more fur over the years than any other aspect.
Knowing the amount of lure to use is critical — especially with changing temperatures and weather conditions. Photo credit Kaden Walrath.
It is important to remember that the lure makers you know and trust spend a lot of time developing their products, and if they have been in business for a long time that’s a sure sign that the lure is good. If you are having some difficulty, simply pick up the phone and ask the person who made it how much to use, and when and where the lure was designed to perform at its best. Many lure makers have developed products intended specifically for the changing needs of trappers throughout each season.
They only stand to improve their sales and reputation by answering your questions honestly. I have been trapping for 30 years and this year I still asked one of my favorite lure makers a few questions about how to use his lures in the best way. I’m sure that there are trappers reading this with twice that many years of trapping experience who have done the same.
Follow the principles of learning how much lure to use, when to use it and spend the rest of your time studying everything that you can about the animals you’re targeting. That is the biggest secret to effectively using lures.
—Toby Walrath is a big-game guide, writer, photographer, hunter and trapper, and can be reached through his Instagram account @walrathoutdoorsphoto.
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