how much do you add to a gal of bait or lure?

i wouldn't add to much because that is some strong stuff.

it supposed to depend on where it came from how much its dilute and whether it really is the genuine replacement or the real article or bout 1000 other things nick whysinky claimed his or his followers tonquin was to be used in strong luiquid baits such as his liver bait at the rate of one fourth ounce per gallon, but ole nick liked his bait plenty strong on tonquin to, dave edwards claimed in lure formulas calling for tonquin musk pods such as nelson no.1, that his tonquin was to be used at one fourth ounce per quart inlure formulation, but that to would be a pretty loud tonquin mix, or at least it was when i made it years ago, along with the mentioned bait, the bottle of tonquin i purchased came from mike marsyada and was in the catalog as tonquin musk 100 per cent authentic, when i recieved it the label said siberian deer mush 100 per cent , and he had written in pen on the label, tonquin 100 per cent genuwine, one drop on your wrist would stink so loud of perfume it would make ya gag, over a period of 30 minutes it chganged its odor 10 times, i washed it off and for days afterwatrds i could smell it faintly whenever i sweated, it reminded me a great deal of skunk essence, is skunky but changes in contact with your wrist, then slowly goes back to skunky again, weird stuff, another musk that acts just as weird and wild is real civet, there is no comparison to the imitation ya buy for 3 bucks an ounce, i bought one half an ounce from an old trap supply house one time that had a small crystal in the bottopm of the bottle for 12 bucks, one drop would spike 4ounces of lure, a half a teaspoon would really get things going, it never lost its odor , the cheap stuuf looses its oodor after about 3 months.

Possum is correct, the amount used would depend entirely on the strength and quality of the product. Anywhere from a few drops to a couple of ounces might be used per gallon. All one can do is add a drop or two at a time and keep stiring it in and when one starts to just smell it faintly is a plenty. Ace

i hope i didn't over do it then i put a 1/2 oz in it. i can smell the other ingredients but the tonquin is pretty strong, but so far my dog loves it. lol

thanks
OST

A half ounce sounds reasonable offshore, glad you didn't use more than that though. Ace

i think it will be ok i added a few other strong smelling ingredients as well so they should kind of equal out. it might not catch anything but so far it smells different than anything i have tried. this is my first try at making lures so if it don't work oh well. lol this is just something i thought might would work.

Can you even get the real stuff anymore? I was under the impression that synthetic was all that was available now.

this was 15$ an ounce

I have a one ounce bottle of tonquin that is 20 years old. All the lable says is "Tonquin Russ Carmen". Do you think this is the real thing, not imitation? It is not all liquid, I can see some chuncks of something in it. Thanks

Unless you were in the business years ago or had some had me down from someone going out of business I doubt you will find authentic material now a days. It is all manufactured material now.Nonetheless it is still quite good if you get uncut material.

The consistency of a good grade tonquin should be a uniform color with no stratification evident. If so it might be a cut or tinctured material.Orginal tonquin material was very dark and much thicker in consistency then the present day tonquin.At least the material I had was of that nature years ago.It went a long ways very quickly and could overpower a formula if you were not careful.

ok. That helps, thanks.
The material I have is crystalized for the most part, I am assuming it should be a liquid? can I restore it to liquid with heat, like you would for honey? Thanks

depending on why it crystalized it is possible that you could heat lightly and see what effects it has upon it.

Good Anise will crystalize when it cools down also.

I have to agree with Mr. Jameson. There is no authentic Tonquin avaiable at any price nor has there been for about 20 years. Who ever tells you different is BS'in' you and probably wants your money! Take it from LT, the Tonquin available is all synthetic! Don't let anyone ever tell you different! Now if someone had some from say, 20-30 years ago... might be different. Futhermore, the man made stuff does not in my opinion, have the same effect on animals as the real product did. Sure, it smells good and will catch some animals but same effect? Please!

From my testing and experiments there is no synthetic that will likely fool the same species into thinking it is from their own kind and elicit the same reaction. However, a good quality synthetic has properties that elicit a strong curiosity. No coyote for example has ever smelled a Siberian deer but will still respond quite well to a good synthetic Tonquin. He probably knows its missing the true animal element and may not recognize it as animal musk but the odor is intrigueing so it brings out a strong curiosity urge. Ace

Asa, Bob, LT...tell me more about civet cat musk. It was mentioned earlier in this post..and I don't mean to change topics BUT it was discussed here.
I had a small bottle of civet cat musk once ...and that stuff was OBNOXIOUS! Couldn't get the smell off me. Thought it was worse than skunk after a while...lol
How is it used? Quanties per pint of lure or urine say? Is it basically used as a curiousity? thanks ahead of time....Mike

A true civet cat has a unique odor.I have not used it enough to give you a good guideline as to amounts per volume of use.I dont like it personally for formulation but it does have a unique fragrance. It does provide a definite curiosity expecially when used in an area that they are not native.

There was someone selling some on the trap shed I believe a couple of months ago. I think he was selling the pods that were cut with the essence still contained.

Like many things that arent used alot I would suggest adding drops to whatever it is you are attempting to develop and monitor daily or every couple of days until you have it where you feel it should be.Some things like essence and other elements can overpower quickly if not monitored and measured slowly until the desired result is achieved.

A half ounce of good tonquin will in my experience possibly overwhelm the other ingredients in a formula if used per a gallon of mix or bait. Time will tell you this of course. If it isnt straight run you may be just fine with that amount.

civet musk, some very old time coyote and wolf formulas from say the late 1800s and early 1900s had civet in the about half the time, their formula always called for a common sized bottle of perfume to the gallon of rotted mixture, guys makin it would figure out by common sense that it was a musk product needed, so at a drug store would ask for a high quality musk perfume, they came in one ounce bottles,they either chose the only one he had or one of two he had, usually it was civet musk or tonquin, it was watered down plenty, however sometimes he recieved something else, however if he asked around a bit the old timers would have told him not to mention many druggist were well read in matters of musk attractions, scent made from two lure dealers in montana had civet in someof their formulas for some time, ive heard its very expensive now and even harder to get in decent quality since the sunami and earthquakes awhile bac disrupted the process, whether they use it now or not i dont know, old getter formulas had civet in them and wiley carroll has a popular one in his book, russ carmen had one for grey fox and coon in his coon book, i thing that one was the imitation civet but i cant re,member.

Thanks guys....still got alot to learn about this stuff.

When you say "civit Cat" musk...do you mean a civit cat, which is a spotted skunk...or, do you mean an African Civit which is where real "civit" musk comes from? I used to have an African civit amd this is what they collect the musk from. It comes from a gland beneath the tail and is used to scent mark their territories. A civit cat or spotted skunk, well, I've used that too but that is just skunk essence, slightly different from the stripped variety but skunk essence just the same. Each does a different thing to a lure but all will attract furbearers, which is what you asking , I guess.

If I can remember, Carmen used 1/4 of an oz. to 4 oz of fish juice. I believe it was a tincture of civet. So it could be anything, as far as smell and power, first run, second run. ?? But that was long ago, but I believe that is correct. Hope this helps. LM.

LT I believe it was African Civet musk as it wasn't skunky..heck I don't know label was worn...you know the deal. Smell was NOT skunky.

The African variety that I use is called Ethiopian Civet Musk. It isn't the skunk relative, but a different critter with a much different smell. This stuff smells like burnt axle grease.

This civet musk for many years has come from China. From what I hear, all the civets were killed when the SARS outbreak occurred. I was also told there is no more new batches of civet musk available, and its not known if it ever will be again. I have heard of some pre-SARS stuff that is available, but awfully expensive. When it was readily available it ran about $90. per ounce.

I was offered some awhile back, but the minimum order was 10 kilos and I wasn't rich enough to purchase it - lol.

I do use it and like it in a couple of my formulations.

I believe the Ethiopian Civet Musk was boycotted by this country for inhumane practices many years ago. The musk come from Ethiopia as the name suggests and it was collected in what was considered an inhumane manner. The musk is a very thick substance that oozes out of the animal when it is mad or excited. The natives would whip the civets and make them ooze the musk which was scraped of the animals rear with a stick and put in a jar. When available it was top quality musk for formulation in canine lures. My Dad was the first to use both Ethiopian Civet and Tonquin in lure formulation. It was introduced to my Dad my the legendary Walter Arnold who at one time had worked briefly for a Boston importer of fine expensive. perfume ingredients. It became rare in pure form many years ago but one was able for many years to get a quality part genuine and part synthetic version called Civette. Civette has nothing in common odorwise with the cheap imitation civet musk sold by most perfume suppliers today. Ace

So those of us wanting to learn more about lure formulations starting now and moving forward I guess have no choice but to find something new since all of the old time favorites are no longer available to anyone anywhere.

depends on what is called new i would think, there is a bunch of synthetic materials invented and tested by the government in the 70s and 80s, probly some even newer, they range from synthetic urine, to fake calf crap to rotten meat oodor to undigested stomach contents to synthetic fermented eggs, my guess is another bunch has been invented that is not even talked about lately, some lure makers swear these synthetic additives are no good or have no value, but others use them a great deal, synthetic fermented egg for example is cussed out loud by some makers and herelded as a major attractor in formulation by others, another thing is how mamny even common ingredients are unknown to most trappers, if what the lure makers tell us is true then there would only be about 4 different lures available, cuz there is only so much can be done with the common ingredients, for example how many have heard of synthetic or artificial mole musk?? nick whshinski knows about it in fact he had it for sale not to many years ago in the trapper predator magazine, so how many others are out there we dont hear about?? lure makers hold thgeir formulas so secret its amazin but then laughand say there is only a few ingredients known to man still used today, thats laughable, they stick their foot right in their own mouth by admitting their lure is either very simple and common, or they lied about ingredients and their lure is very complex and unknown, ill just pick on ole bogmaster for a moment, not that he disusses such things, he once told me he would not take 20 thousand dollors for either one of his beaver formulas, but how complicated could such a formula be, now either it is pretty complicated or he qwould not think it worth 20 grand or more.

lol possum, I use a long list of ingredients in my lures. Way more than four or five. Heck, I have one lure that has 9 ingredients in it. I know Asa also believes in using multiple ingredients.

I just ran through a quick list in my head and I use well over 30 different musks, glands and essential oils. This doesn't include glycerine, propylene glycol, sodium benzoate, etc.

I would be hard pressed to limit myself to four or five ingredients.

With over 4ooo catagerized ingredients, a good chemist can pick apart and match an products DNA right down to the gram. Don't let any lure maker tell you with todays science that it can not be done! For that kind of money, I could have you a list of any lure makers entire lure line. I work with the best chemist at P&G....Don't tell me it can't be done because I'll prove somebody wrong!
As far as African or Ethiopian Civits, they are raised right here in the United States as exotic pets...don't ask me why because the one I bought was so mean they weren't even sure of the sex. You just have to know where and how to look! Mine was a female and had 3 vents, one of course was it's musk gland. I have some musk I collected by running it in a very narrow cage, so narrow that it could not turn around. A door was then opened at the back of this cage and the tail was then lifted and I scraped the musk with a spoon. I can tell you that you would not have whipped this one as it would have eaten you alive! No, I do not have any for sale.

paul, i really did not say 4 different ingredients, i said 4 different lures with the ingredients supposed to be available,with the 3o ingredients off the top of your head that would leave only so many used per lure and only so many true varations, i think my point was there is more ingredients used than just the ones in lets say your catalog, or lure makers lures would all smell so much the same that the animals would burn out on many of them in only a few seasons, just for example awhile back several people were talking about muscaro, sweet musk, from what was said one luremaker may use the same formulation as another but yet another will use a different one, so even muscaro or sweet musk can have vareations the common trapper would not know of as he would assume muscaro was muscaro,civet musk and tonquin is another example as person after person will tell you it is unavailable due to a law passed against it but lure makers always are usin it, so it must be available from some where as you already said you were offered a large amount, a western luremaker stated in his catalog he had just purchshed some of the genuwine and what he had paid for it as the reason for his lures going up in price, now i do not think you or this other fellow ar telling lies, so, there must be a source for at least these two ingredients in the real or near real form , yet it is common knowledge to average trappers that no, it has not been available for many years.