Just ground a couple pounds of castor tonight. With the price of castor it is hard to send them down the tube. I did finally get a great grind on them. Last fall the heavy duty grinder that I had used for meat died. I replaced it and then dug into the old one to find it just needed a capacitor. Triple ground through 1/8 plate with just enough vodka to get the dried castor to go through and it is a nice smooth paste! I can't imagine paying for a drum of castor and starting a batch like the lure makers.

Tell me about it. In order to make a profit, I had to raise my lure prices a few years ago. This was based on castor at $60 a pound. Unfortunately, a lot of my lure formulations include a lot of castor. Now with castor at $80 a pound, the built in profit at $60 a pound is gone. I'm back to working virtually for free when making lures for sale at wholesale prices for dealers. The hard solution seems to be not selling my lures wholesale to dealers. Either that or raise my lure prices again, and I don't want to do that. I feel like I'm between a rock and a hard place.

I'd say raise the prices. I doubt many people could fault you for having to do so. I don't see any other markets where manufacturers sell their products at a lose and stay in business.

Exactly! I know that my days of making money in my trapping were the 1980s. Now I do it strictly because I love it. Same with making my own lure. If I took a pound of castor, sold it for $90 bucks and spent that on Backbreaker, I would end up with more lure, and better lure in the end, and that doesn't even take into consideration that you need to make a profit.

But if I only sell retail, I'll still make profit. I don't know where the ceiling is for lure prices, and I feel like they're priced high enough if I were a consumer. I stepped out being the first to increase last two lure price increases and others followed. I'm thinking I don't want to do it again. If I just stay with retail sales, I won't have to increase my lure prices.

Good formulas will move at higher prices. But those so-so lures and common odors not so much. They will feel the sting of going up too high $$.

Is it cheaper to buy it or trap beaver?

I've always bought lure, and I've always made some of my own. However, I think I'm now going to be making more and buying less. I bought finished lures by the pint two weeks ago from a well known lure maker and by the time you throw in postage, the special "container excise charge," and handling, I paid nearly $90 per pint. In contrast, fur prices for the animals I trap are at historic lows (for the past decade or more).

So while I will always believe in buying and using commercial baits or lures, there is a sliding scale where the price of the lure just doesn't compensate for the fur being sold -- so now both the lure maker and the trapper are working for free.

I haven't been able to catch enough beavers in a year to get over 300 pounds of castor I need for a year.

300 pounds wow... I always wondered how much lure you high rollers sell in a year. I just play around but it seems securing high quality ingredients would be one of the harder parts of the business. And it seems to be getting worse. I have two ingredients I really like that I haven't been able to buy the last couple of years. One I can get myself but its a fair amount of work. Luckily the last time I purchased them I bought a few years worth.

Wholly smokes! You'd have to join the 1000 beaver club every year!

Selling that much lure at retail quantities sounds like a lot of work.

I've done a thousand beavers a year a number of times, but it would be more like 3,000+ beavers a year club.

Do you really need to sleep? lol

LOL, I like to sleep when I'm tired. The older I get the tireder I get.

I'm thinking after you skinned 3000+ beaver you would be too tired to make any lure.

Not all beaver are worth skinning...just saying.

Just curious, I hear a lot of adding a bit of vodka, and in other cases using vodka for tincturing. Is the vodka key, or the alcohol, I can get 80 proof vodka here, and 150 proof ever clear. Which would be the best?

I add about a pint of 100 proof vodka to a five gallon bucket of ground castor to keep mold away. Castor tends to mold when stored at room temperature.

I use 100 proof vodka to tincture castor. The ratio is about 1/3 castor to 2/3 vodka. I tried 190 proof everclear and it left a distinct alcohol odor after 6 months, whereas the 100 proof vodka didn't.

Thanks Paul!
I guess that's why some people drink vodka when they don't want others to smell it.