Question for the group. Looking for opinions and insight as I have an issue or maybe non issue and I am overthinking it. I have a call lure that I am working on that is oil based. This is a purchased lure recipe that has been produced and sold for a few years. Anyways the recipe itself uses glycol and the standard format mixes well and maintains its form while bottled. It does however seem to lose the level of essence over time and not have a spectacular holding power. I have a batch of the recipe made exactly the same but with glycerine and the essence holding seems to be far superior to the same recipe with the glycol. The issue I have is it does separate over time and need mixed up. I know of some lure makers that sell lures that separate and need remixed often. In my mind though i struggle with that. What are the thoughts or concensus of the group on this. Is there maybe a happy medium of glycol and glycerine used together. Testing and my preference absolutely lean towards the Glycerine based as better results. Am i just overthinking the consistency?

I have lures that is 10 years old and will separate. quick shake the separation is gone and the product is just as good now as then. The critter doesn't care that it separates over time.

If the lure works well for you do not worry about it, just shake it up before using. Your lure is more like a Tincture anyway with a glycol / glycerin base? I think you have the glycol vs glycerin thing figured out. Personally I prefer baits & lures that can be smeared on stuff.

I have single ingredients that will separate a bit if they set long enough. Some lure makers target the trapper (put more value on looks and texture) and some lure makers target the critter. My thought ALWAYS go with what TESTS the best. The critters opinion should trump everyone elses. Trying to get the right look or texture just means your adding something to accomplish that and diluting the ingredients that are actually attracting the animal. I don't "antifreeze" any of own stuff just for this reason and everything I make so far is still workable when the temps drop to below zero at night. Between the oils I use and the products I use for tincturing there's a lot of antifreeze all ready in there.
Just my 2 cents.

I will add I realize some formulations and some regions do need some antifreeze but I also think some people over do it. I've seen guys in regions warmer than mine wondering how to antifreeze a formulation that didn't need it because it froze in their freezer. I've got lure from guys that trap in some pretty darn cold regions that work for them but will freeze solid in my freezer. So I guess to anyone reading this what I'm saying is I'm not sure the freezer is the best judge of how much antifreeze to use.

Stabilizing, using an ingredient bonding agent and the right amount of antifreeze will compliment a product. Antifreeze such as glycerin / p. glycol serves to not only help guard against freezing but also retards the evaporation / dry out of your product. So when building a product you need to consider all the zones that your product will be used and to base your formula on such information. Basically you have to prepare for some of the worse case scenarios also.

Your base material is a big part of that building process particularly in lure development. Very cold temps can constrict the odor output simply due to the environmental conditions. Many of us don't deal with extreme cold, but there are trappers that work in and thru extreme cold most of their season.

As a trapper first, I prefer to have a product that is workable and may thicken to some degree due to very cold temps, but not to freeze extremely hard. As a formulator I know the benefits of using antifreeze in every lure that is made. If working some extended cold periods the urine and bait gets a blending of antifreeze as well. Putting out some LDC certainly helps in these cold spells as well..

Keeping a small amount of material such as lure, from completely freezing, will certainly improve its ability to release its odor base agents much better. Animals have a very keen sense of smell as we all know, so building some safeguards into a product are just a good practice and will help enhance a products effectiveness.

Most things have their pros and cons and as formulators the fun is learning how to balance them out to maximize our results. One of the cons of glycerin is on coyotes in my area, based of testing extensively, is that it reduces the attractiveness of a product. What I did was took ground deer mixed it with a moderate amount of glycerin and tested it beside straight ground deer. The results were quite consistent. Fact being that if I don't need it in my formulation for another reason in my area I try not to use it. Some situations it's benefits may out way its negatives. But from my experience this doesn't always hold for every situation. Just food for thought from what the coyotes told me.

I appreciate the feedback on this guys. I have gotten some pms and the information here helps me out for sure. I am going to hold a portion of this batch back and work with it a bit just out of curiosity for the combination itself. I will test some of the feedback out with that. In the mean time the product performs very well as it is and i can replicate it 100 times over with my setup right now. Testing side by side with the original version has about a 50% increase in first site visits going towards the glycerine version. Then tested with a national brand competitor it is almost exactly 50/50 first visit at a site.

I believe I have a way to make this lure into a smear lure and have it as a liquid lure as well. The ingredients being similar I think i cam going to try and produce both types if testing warrants the product to be able to market to both the smear lure trapper and the wet lure trapper. Each having their advantages and disadvantages in my book seasonally.