Lure Whore

[bogio]

Talking coyotes.

If you put it in relationship terms, OGs products are my "old lady".
If limited to one product line, that would be it.I've picked up 2 other mistresses, one from another Montana supplier, and one from Canada.

Most years I take on a girl friend or two. They never seem to last.
This year I plan to date some out of SW Iowa. I have high hopes.

Are most of you monogamous or do you step out on your attractors? And what standard do you hold it to to become a commitment?

[seldom]

Up until ths past year I always had my nose to the wind and for years did a lot of objective sampling/testing. Now that I'm a little longer in the tooth when it comes to coyote scents, I'm satisfied with the best I can find for my territory. Sure, I see/hear a lot of subjective T & A but I've already been there and tried a lot of them on so to speak, so if me and my coyotes can get it on and get satisfaction, it is what it is!

[CoonDuke]

I have found that whether it be commercial lures or homemade lures that I am trying for the first time...the first season a new lure (heavy use on an established long term trapline) will usually do outstanding, after that its effectiveness goes downhill.

I need a few seasons using a lure before I rely on it as a consistant producer...no matter how good it is year one.

[seldom]

Jul 6, 2012 16:22:12 GMT -6 CoonDuke said:

I have found that whether it be commercial lures or homemade lures that I am trying for the first time...the first season a new lure (heavy use on an established long term trapline) will usually do outstanding, after that its effectiveness goes downhill.

I need a few seasons using a lure before I rely on it as a consistant producer...no matter how good it is year one.

That's interesting CD, I never see diminishing returns once the scent qualifies through testing and makes it onto my lines! I've seen comparative "surpassing" of one scent(combo) over the other(s) but that doesn't mean that one "diminished" in it's ability as a constant producer, it means one preformed better than the other. Such as last year where a new, sweet thang combo surpassed my #1 combo of 7 years even though the old #1 still had literally the same catch:set ratio.. For me personally, this type of objective, fact finding is what it's all about when it comes to scents that I use.

[CoonDuke]

Maybe that is a better way of putting it. For simplicity's sake say I was using lure 1 and lure 2 and both are consistent producers. This season I add lure 3 to the line. It seems the first year lure 3 will really out produce the other two good lures. Lures 1 and 2 are working fine, but lure 3 seems to stand out. A season or two later, the 3 lures seem to be all pretty equal. None really diminished in their reliability...one one stood out for a season.

I can only attribute this to residual lure odor at sets. I know mated pairs that move in an area late winter early spring come in contact with old lure odors. Hard to tell with pups though as fox pups don't seem to range out much till early summer.

I don't think good lures burn out, but new smells seem to get interest.

[bogio]

I'm going to side with Seldom here. Lures or combos that work seem to continue to work consistently year after year here. Sometimes it takes a little experimenting to find what seems to be the best time in the course of the season to use them. My go to combo works pretty consistently through the entire fall/winter. Two other combinations are rather lackluster early but shine hard after the first of the year.

If you can kill them on their first encounter, there is no habituation. That's my goal.

[musher]

"If you can kill them on their first encounter, there is no habituation. "

Not so sure about that. I would say that ALL my sets get hit. But often enough it is after the trap is long gone. The animal that digs down through 2/3 feet of snow to check out an old dirthole wasted lots of energy to find not much in caloric intake.

Will it re-investigate the same smell in the future?

[trappincoyotes39]

I have used alot of lures through the years and I have plenty of favorites and try a few new things every few years. I have found lure rotation to be successful, specially when trapping the same locations on the same ranches for months out of each year.

I have seen some of the big name lures start to go from great quaility to lesser, so I have went away from some of those and some stand the test of time and keep the same quaility year after year. I would suspect ingrident cost and wanting a better profit margin to be culprits in this area.

Bogio I'm the opposite had some OG lures I used for years, I now find myself buying little from them anymore. There are other great lures on the market that for ME perform just as well and some better than what I was using from OG, each to their own though if they work for you in your are great.

[bogio]

Musher,

I'll concede that you're not going to kill him if there is no trap present or it is out of commission. Hopefully, that attractor that caused his interest the first time will trip his trigger a secound time. If not, then a secound, different attractor will hopefully do the trick. My point was directed more towards a coyote encountering a working/operational set for the first time.

Does there have to be an edible reward for the animal for find satifaction in his actions? Can't the smell/odor/stink in an of it self sometimes be enough? Odors that cause a rolling reaction make most canines smile if they can get them smeared all over themselves. Odors that bring about urination/defecation/kick back responses seem to bring an element of satifaction to them.

TC,

I think you misinterpeted my original intent. I wasn't stating that OGs products are the end all as they are not. The results I receive with them is what I use to establish my standard/base for comparison of products I'm trying out. No product is the best for all people in all situations. Just doesn't work that way.

"Lure Whores" is a term a friend and I use to describe ourselves in that although we have established products that we have faith in and receive good results from we continue to "whore around" with new ones to see what we can find. As a result, we both have alot of stuff on hand. Alot of it marginal at best in our situations.

My interest was in whether or not others participate in this kind of behavior. Or have they found what they feel they need and abandoned the search?

A reliable source says to try the SW Iowa connection. Only time on my line with my methods will prove if they are right for me or not.

[seldom]

Jul 7, 2012 19:48:20 GMT -6 bogio said:

The results I receive with them is what I use to establish my standard/base for comparison of products I'm trying out. No product is the best for all people in all situations. Just doesn't work that way.

"Lure Whores" is a term a friend and I use to describe ourselves in that although we have established products that we have faith in and receive good results from we continue to "whore around" with new ones to see what we can find. As a result, we both have alot of stuff on hand. Alot of it marginal at best in our situations.

My interest was in whether or not others participate in this kind of behavior. Or have they found what they feel they need and abandoned the search?

If nobody else understood your question, I did and I certainly agree with the need to establish a "standard of comparison".

I run three combos and have finally tapered off whoring around after many years. I'm not saying I completely quit whoring around, just tapered way off once I met my goal of finding my third legit combo. That being said though, the past few years I've been eye-balling Corr's lures. Never hurts to look does it? ;D ;D

[trappnman]

Its no secret that a decade or more ago, I met a fellow on the internet, and we got talking about coyotes and coyote lures. He set me a bottle of his lure, and it immediately outproduced the lures I was using and that was in side by side tests.

some ask- wouldn;t oyur other lures have aught the coyote as well- maybe, but the point was more that they PREFERRED, this yellow concoction from Canada.

since then, I use Stef's lures at 95+ of my sets.

I do have a few other favorites- Fox creme is one such

and every year, I have people give me lures to try out, and I use them, but seldom does one stand out as being equal to what I currently like.

A couple have- I'll echo the words about Keg Creek, I found them to be a vbery good addtion to my line of lures I use, and found one up in the U.P. called "Sweet Baby" gland lure that I'll be stocking up on this weekend.

I thpught o nlures is this- as in anything, there is a class of lures that are on the top- far superior to the average lures. And in this group of lures, I DO think one produces as well as the other- and all far outproduce the run of the mill lures offered for sale.

Lure burnout is often talked about- and I can for sure see that if you have a location where you pound coyotes, that after a while, the remaining coyotes are lure shy.

when collaring coyotes, I caught 5 after I had recollared them- all in the same stlye sets, all with the same lures. One was taken 1 week after capture, in a set 50 yards away. The others were caught the following season. So how prevalent lure shyness is, and for certain how long it lasts, is debatable.

In any case, I use 2 lures & bait at each set- sometimes 2 baits, natural and prepared. Think of the infinite amount of odor combinations possible, and the chances of an individual coyote smelling the SAME at another set, is small at best.

So yes, I'm set in my way of using lure, and until something surpasess that, I'll continue to do so.

[bogio]

Do you think that an individuals methods can influence the effectiveness of lure, even those in that class above and beyond the norm?

Said another way, can two accomplished trappers working in the same general area, use the same top shelf attractor and draw different conclusions concerning it's effectiveness because of their own individual setting/application techniques?

I say yes, which is why I believe you have to prove products on your own line in your own way.

[seldom]

Jul 8, 2012 21:46:44 GMT -6 bogio said:

Do you think that an individuals methods can influence the effectiveness of lure, even those in that class above and beyond the norm?

Said another way, can two accomplished trappers working in the same general area, use the same top shelf attractor and draw different conclusions concerning it's effectiveness because of their own individual setting/application techniques?

I say yes, which is why I believe you have to prove products on your own line in your own way.

I'd have to guess that an indiviidual's application of a scent(4drops-44drops) would be a factor as would whether the scent was placed at ground level, 4" below or 8" below, etc. ground level. Also weather would be included such as dry, wet, cold, etc.

But I've determined it goes beyond that to the inherent characteristics of the scent alone. I believe a commercial bait's are good examples of what I'm talking about because they're applied in such a similar manner which eliminates at least the amount of application and depth of application.

My method of testing commercial baits is identical to that of testing lures except the amount applied. I would say that bait manufactures intend their product to be used below ground level which it is with my testing. When in the case of commercial bait and I observe tremendous differences of reaction to them, I can only come to one real conclusion. That baits can be inherently different in their attract-ability and has nothing to do with how I applied them.

As commercial bait is a scent and you place two different baits 10' apart in identical 1" holes 8" deep straight down and coyotes walk right over one bait hole to dig the hell out of the other, at times repeatedly, the only conclusion that I can make is that they like one bait(scent) over the other!!!!! This from my experience and observation is no different from testing lures even with the recognized variables described previously.

A couple years ago I had a phone conversation with a well known trapper/lure & bait manufacture that went south so to speak. I was ordering more of his bait which was my top producer and I remarked that I was using it in-combo with a lure manufactured by an individual in PA. Well this guy took exception and asked if I'd tried one of his lures which was THE end-all of all lures. Top seller! A "lure lovefest"! I told him I'd tested that particular lure and found it really was of no value to me compared to others and most certainly to the one I was using with his bait. I described my testing in specific detail, got my notes out and described the lack of reaction to his lure. He was incredulous and said that it was impossible for that to have happened as I'd described(my application, hole, and time of year)? I ask him if he thought my testing method was a legitimate method and he agreed that it was. I ask him if he'd ever trapped in my county and on my properties? He said certainly not, to that i said than you don't know how any of your scents work for me do you? End of discussion!

Of course, he could have figured he was talking with a fool so arguing was out of the question!

[jkoyen]

Hard to beat the 3 C's. Carmen's canine call. At least the first few weeks. New clean sets after that get something different.....jk

[trappnman]

seldom brings up a point I've always thought about-

and that is a lure, that has a good reputation as a "killer" lure, yet for some its a mediocre lure at best.

in a few cases, it might be temp/weather related- the extreme south and the extreme north might well have different results with the same lure. But for most of us, we are trapping in about the same temperature ranges so temps shouldn't be a factor.

and methods, shouldn't enter into it either- if your methods are good enough to have certain lures perform well, then those methods shouldn't have any bearing on the effectiveness of a different lure.

so why? Bad batch of lure? that could happen for sure.

Sometimes I thinks its location- good locations are given over to the proven lures, and so-so ones to the unproven lures. Most trappers won't set up a primo set with unknown lures, they want to give it the best shot that they know, and that's the proven lure.

sometimes it that the trapper talks a better game than reality shows- I know a guy that states he can't catch anything on a certain lure, and makes it seem like he catches 100s on other lures, when I know his seasons take can be counted on 2 hands, if not one. So, his experiences as "its a bad lure" are worthless.

sometimes perhaps its the lures its being compared to- if you have a real humdinger, then the fact could be the other lure IS a good lure, just not quite as good as the original- making the case if it had just been the test lure- then bingo.

I know that using good lures, makes it hard to have other lures outperform them on the line. so for me, to be very honest, it takes a heck of a lure, one that stands out as being more successful then run of the mill lures ( and I've used a lot of such- I call them "throwaway lures" meaning they are the second lure added to a set, rather than the primary lure.), something that makes me sit up and notice, before I'll add it as a regular lure on my line.

[seldom]

Jul 10, 2012 8:28:54 GMT -6 trappnman said:

Sometimes I thinks its location- good locations are given over to the proven lures, and so-so ones to the unproven lures. Most trappers won't set up a primo set with unknown lures, they want to give it the best shot that they know, and that's a proven lure.

sometimes perhaps its the lures its being compared to- if you have a real humdinger, then the fact could be the other lure IS a good lure, just not quite as good as the original- making the case if it had just been the test lure- then bingo.

I know that using good lures, makes it hard to have other lures outperform them on the line. so for me, to be very honest, it takes a heck of a lure, one that stands out as being more successful then run of the mill lures ( and I've used a lot of such- I call them "throwaway lures"

One of the toughest challenges I have is making sure a "new" lure or bait gets it's chance on the line and at primo locations. It takes discipline on my part to always remember the "new" lure or bait was tested and the results were as good as my "proven" lure(s) or bait(s) so in she goes. That being said, my system allows for my "proven" lure(s) and/or bait(s) to be used in the near vicinity anyway.

The "throwaway lures and baits" are literally that, throwaways! They're the ones who didn't make the cut from testing to the line. Once on the line all scents(lures and baits) have to beat a catch:set ratio I've established as a benchmark. If one doesn't meet that benchmark one season, it becomes a "throwaway" and I go back to being a lure whore!

[glen]

Up until 5 years I was a HO, I started making my own lures and now I'm on the stright and narrow. With the catches I have made with my lure I will never HO around again

[trappincoyotes39]

carmens canine call is not the same as it once was. It is being made differently I have no doubts about that.