SIMPLIFYING LURES

The various attractants for furbearers can be grouped into four main categories: Food, Curiosity, Territoriality and Reproduction

The trapping industry is awash with lures. Lures for canines, water animals, predators and prey. Heck, there are even multiple lure formulations for each individual species available from each lure manufacturer! Choosing which lures to buy can be pretty confusing, even mind numbing at times.

Rest assured that buying and using trapping lures doesn’t have to be that hard. You don’t necessarily need a lure for each species (that’s a marketing gimmick in a lot of cases), and many lures work great for multiple species. More importantly, buy lure that fits your objectives on the trapline.

When I’m looking at buying or making lures, I like to focus on what I’m trying to accomplish in terms of animal attractants. Different lures will elicit different responses, and a variety of attractant types will ensure you have your bases covered.

Scent is an incredibly important sense in furbearing animals. It allows them to find food, sense danger, detect the presence of other animals and establish territories. As trappers looking to lure animals to a set, we want to use attractants that appeal to their senses.

To simplify things, the various attractants for furbearers can be grouped into four main categories: Food, Curiosity, Territoriality and Reproduction. The ability for us to appeal to these four attractant categories with lures is quite variable. For instance, attracting an animal based on reproductive urges is typically only effective during the breeding season, and the pheromones a female produces when in heat are highly complex, volatile and almost impossible to duplicate in a lure.

The ability to appeal to an animal’s food desires is much easier, but also varies based on level of hunger, food availability in the environment, and type of food in the lure. The territoriality appeal can vary based on animal population density, range size relative to trapping area, animal species and resource limitations. Curiosity appeal is highly dependent on species and perhaps the most difficult to predict.

Within these different attractions, lure makers have designed a variety of lure formulas that can be categorized into three main types: Food Lures, Call Lures and Gland Lures. Most trappers find it good practice to have a few of each of these types of lures in their arsenal. In other words, if you’re trapping for coyotes, it isn’t enough just to buy a few ‘coyote lures’ made by some of the big lure makers. More specifically, you want your arsenal to include at least one of each type (food, call, gland).

A food lure will appeal primarily to animal hunger. Type of food attractant can be based on what an animal typically consumes in its diet – for instance, a mouse based lure for coyotes – or can appeal to both hunger and curiosity by using a less common food item – for instance, horse meat or beef liver. A common food item would typically be more effective during times of low food abundance, while a changeup curiosity type food can work better when common foods are abundant.

A call lure aims to bring animals in from a distance using any one of a variety of attractants. Typically something with a strong odor that isn’t super common in an area can be a good choice. Due to their strong odor, call lures are good from far, but can be far from good up close. Once curiosity has been satisfied, an animal may not stick around to work the set with an overpowering call lure emitting its odor. That’s why call lures are more often used in cold weather and/ or placed in elevated areas not directly at the set.

Gland lures are perhaps the most underutilized lure type on most traplines. These can be very effective at appealing to an animal’s territorial instinct. The presence of glands of another animal of the same species can give the impression that another animal is in the territory. A furbearer will want to further investigate at the set to determine who left the scent and gather this information for future use. Glands of an animal of a different species can have a similar effect. Often an animal will take the time to leave their own sign at the set to indicate their presence to the other animal and reassert their claim to the area.

Breaking down lure types and attractants can simplify the use of trapping lure and help us understand what lures to use in a given situation. But it isn’t that simple. Many trapping lures are made up of a blend of different types, with food, call and gland ingredients all put together. This can really complicate things.

It might seem logical that a huge blend of different attractant types would be better than a single type lure, but this isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, putting too much into a lure can sometimes make these ‘all in one’ lures less effective.

Oftentimes the more complex lures do work well though, which can be a blessing and a curse. If you’re just happy to catch fur and the complex lure does the trick, then great! But if you want to know how you attracted an animal and caused it to work the set and get caught, a complex lure won’t allow you to pick apart the attractant that did the trick, and you won’t gain the necessary information to become a more effective trapper. And that’s where the simple lure solution might just be the best. 