Hi,
I got a little bait testing in before trapping season. As I said in my "Egg Eater" post my brother had something eating his eggs so we went to trap it. I made two sets with the recipe below one flat set and one dirt hole. Caught a skunk first day at the flat set and something dug out the dirt hole but didn't get caught. (I didn't used a big enough pan cover and dirt filled in under the pan.)

2 cans Mackerel

3 eggs

3/4 cup fish oil

Sodium Benzoate.


I got this recipe from someone ese and modified it a little. (He used old cooking oil and more of it.) He claimed he caught, coyotes, bobcat, fox, coon etc on it. I guess I'll see what it will catch this season.

Good luck if you try it!
AuthorTrapper.

As far as testing goes I would test year round during all the seasons and breeding seasons and test it often to really see how effective the bait is. You could dress a dirthole up and place a sneaker down next to it and have animals come by to investigate it. That is all a lot of trappers need to trap animals, is for them to walk up to the hole or "set". It isn't all about the bait, there is actually skill involved in trap placement to increase your odds in sealing the deal. Bait doesn't trap animals it's an incentive for the animal to commit, but if your setup isn't up to par chances are you will continue to search for that magic "formula" by modifying this and modifying that. Attracting isn't as hard as most think, but you'd never guess that by the crazy ingredient lists people talk about to attract an animal that is curious by nature.

So very true. But will continue to fall on deaf ears.