Hello everyone.
I'm new to this forum. My name is Dmitry, I am 22 years old and I am from Russia, Moscow region (I recently moved to Argentina).
My father and I have been hunting beaver for about 5 years. I would like to tell you more about beaver hunting in Russia in this topic, I think it will be interesting. I have gathered quite a lot of castoreum (beaver glands). I would also like to discuss castoreum here. In Russia, castoreum tincture (Tincture of dried beaver gland in alcohol) is used for medical purposes. There is very little information about this, there is general information, but very little experience described from people who use tincture.
My family and several friends have been using tincture for several years for preventive purposes, and there has been some experience in this and certain improvements in the body have also been noticed. There have also been cases of overdose with tincture, I will tell you about it further if there is interest.
I found several stores that sell castoreum, but they indicate that it is used for perfume. I'm wondering if people really buy glands for perfume purposes (not in production) or also use them for medical purposes, but stores don't want to take responsibility?
Let's share useful information on the beaver in this topic.

Welcome to T-Man Dmitry. Those are some nice beaver and a beautiful otter. I would be interested to hear about what ailments are cured with castor. Over here I've seen castor mixed with whiskey while I don't know what ailments it would cure I'm sure a few shots would make you feel better

I had a fella from Alaska who told me about using castor for medicinal purposes. He got the recipe from a Russian friend of his. Here's what he said.

"I cut two medium size beaver castors into ¼ ‘’ pieces. Put them in one quart of Absolut vodka. Shake morning and night for thirty days. Strain through a cheese cloth. Take one teaspoon a day."

Hi Dmitry.
People in Canada,in Quebec and Northern Ontario tincture beaver castor in gin for medicinal use.
One fat dry castor in 40 0z bottle of Gin.
The Native people use castor for putting on wounds to make them heal,especially for diabetics who get foot sores that wont heal any other way.

There are several answers, so there is interest in this topic. All the answers are about castoreum, so we will discuss this for now.
I'll start with the basic information on castoreum (beaver glands). Beaver uses glands to mark the territory and I also read that for healing wounds after fights with other beavers.
The gland is a paired organ consisting of two sacs connecting together and exiting into the urinary canal. I have met glands with bags of different sizes, differing in volume by about one and a half times, but usually the two halfs of glands are the same size.
Both sexes beavers have glands , but at the same time the beavers is less than 15kg - glands weighs less than 100 grams (in a non-dried state). Beavers weighing from 15kg have a gland usually about 150-250 grams. The age/weight of the beaver is not an indicator of the weight of the glands. A beaver of smaller weight - may have a larger gland by weight if you compare two beavers. The largest beaver caught, about 35-40kg, had a small glands of about 250g, while a beaver weighing 28kg had a record weight of 400 grams of glands (for my trophies). I saw videos with 500g glands and there were also photos with a record 800 or 900 grams of glands, while beavers were also less than 30kg in weight. Thus, it can be understood that the glands grows quite unpredictably, perhaps this is due to nutrition, beaver genetics or other factors that we don't know about.
So, this is the first part about the basic data on beaver glands.

Those are some nice clean castors. How long do you normally age them. Or is it till a particular dryness.

The next part is about drying and preparing the tincture.
So, before sending the beaver glands to dry, it is necessary to cut off excess films from it, while not damaging the gland, because there is a liquid in it that can leak through an accidentally cut place. The outer shell of the gland consists of many thin films, I always cut off only the upper, thickest film similar to a thin layer of fat. Usually it is possible to get two halves united by a jumper and at this point I tie a thread to cover the hole and further suspend the glands.

I dry the glands at a temperature of 25°C (77°F), and complete drying takes about 1 year. If the glands is small, then drying can take about 9 months. Dried glands is 2 times lighter than fresh glands (I've done a lot of experiments recording the actual weight and weight after drying for different glands). Some sellers are cunning and often sell under-dried glands, you need to take this into account when buying.
After the gland is dried, you can prepare a tincture for oral administration. This method does not imply the use of the gland as bait for hunting beaver.
For the preparation of the tincture, I use 70% alcohol (ethyl alcohol). For a medium-sized gland (about 100 grams in dry form) I use 1 liter of alcohol (this will not be the final tincture), before putting the glands in the tincture, they need to be broken in half so that the alcohol gets inside the glands. I insist the tincture for about 1 month in a dark place at a temperature of 25°C (77°F). After the glands has been infused, I dilute the resulting tincture with 70% alcohol, focusing on the color of the final tincture. I make the final color like dark cognac.
This is what dry glands looks like from the outside:

This is how the dry gland looks in the section.Inside the gland there are pieces as black as coal, and they dissolve in alcohol. Unfortunately, I don't have a good photo of a fresh gland inside, but there is a light liquid and small yellow particles about 1 mm in it.

This is what 1 liter of tincture concentrate looks like.

This is what a ready-made tincture in a 0,5 liter bottle looks like.

Good post-thanks for this good information.

Looks like you really care about your product. I am very interested to learn more.

Thanks for posting some of your work.
As you have moved to Argentina can you fill us in some of the beaver problems in the southern tip of that country. They were captured close to my summer cottage ( Dachas) by a trapper that just passed away at 90.

Thank you for the positive answers about this topic. Now I am preparing material for the next topic, in the coming days I will post a new post. I have accumulated quite a lot of beaver glands. Since one gland of 100 grams (completely dried) is enough to make 2-3 liters of tincture. And one liter of tincture is enough for a year for preventive use of 1 teaspoon per day, so I have a lot of glands over the past few years. We hunt beavers, among other things, because of the excellent natural meat, and every spring and autumn we get about 15 beavers so that there is a supply of meat for more than half a year if there is meat every day. I have the opportunity to send glands to all countries. I posted it on my website https://pyrocomponent.com/other/castoreum/ (my main activity is pyrotechnics, and I added the glands simply as a separate product to an existing website). You can also write to me on the forum in private messages.



As for beavers in the south of Argentina:
I have been in Argentina for only 4 months and have not yet been to the south of Argentina where there are beavers. I went to Argentina alone (my relatives are in Russia), and it is quite difficult to hunt alone, besides, I have no need for meat extraction in Argentina, there is excellent and cheap beef here. Are you in Argentina or for what reason are you interested in the problem of beavers in Argentina? Recently, when I was looking for information about castoreum, I also came across the official website of Argentina, which describes the problem with the large number of beavers in the "Land of Fire" (in the south of Argentina) https://www.argentina.gob.ar/ambiente/biodiversidad/exoticas-invasoras/proyecto/castor. The original language is Spanish, you can turn on the auto-translator in your browser and read it in a convenient language if necessary.
I think that beavers in such an uncontrolled place are a big problem. Beavers cause great damage to trees and create waterlogging in reservoirs. Beaver is a very strong animal, he has practically no enemies (except for a tree that can fall on him ). Since there is excellent and cheap meat in Argentina, I think beaver hunting in that place is not popular (it is easier to buy meat) if there is not much interest in the hunting process. When the beaver has multiplied from 20 individuals to 100,000 individuals in 50 years, it now looks impossible to control the popularization of this animal in the wild. I think that huge teams of hunters should work in those places every day in order to somehow reduce the beaver population, but it is impossible to completely get rid of the beaver. If you focus on the article, no one is purposefully engaged in controlling the beaver in that place (humane methods of population control are simply impossible), and most likely the beaver will continue to reproduce perfectly and develop new reservoirs moving towards the equator.

How do you prepare the gland for bait for hunting beaver?

In general, I will write about hunting a little later.
As for the preparation of bait. You need to understand why you plan to use the bait. I mean the hunting method you use. If you catch a beaver in a loop, then I do not recommend using bait, I had a negative experience with this (I will tell about it later). If you want the beast to get out on the ground and hunt with guns - then the bait makes sense. I didn't have a lot of experience cooking bait. I tried to make a bait based on petroleum jelly (by milling the gland and mixing it with warm liquid petroleum jelly). I will not like this kind of bait, vaseline in such a mixture does not give a good smell. It seemed to me optimal to use ordinary alcohol tincture as bait. There is a nuance that alcohol evaporates quickly and the smell decreases, but in any case it gives a strong smell. If you plan to wait for the beaver in the evening - you can just before darkness comes - put the bait. Usually the bait is applied to small sticks and the tincture is absorbed into it. I also want to note that the glands of small beavers are usually used for bait.
It is believed that a sufficient amount of substances has not yet accumulated in the small glands (for oral use as a preventive measure). If you use large glands in the bait, a small beaver may be afraid of this bait because the smell of this gland can carry information, including about the age of the beaver, so a small gland is more likely not to scare off the beaver. It is optimal to use 30-40g glands (dry weight) for the manufacture of tincture for bait.

Thanks Dmitry.

Dmitry, I also like to eat beaver meat even though lots of meats are available to me. In my house we eat mainly whitetail deer and fish (walleye,perch and crappie).
Here are some pictures for you to enjoy of making beaver sausage. I mix it with a little fatty pork shoulder and spices

Cool, I make different products from beaver meat, including sausage, dumplings and cutlets. In a mixture of 4 parts of beaver meat and 1 part of fat pork fat - it turns out an excellent stuffing. I like beaver more than large animals, because I can also fry meat well and it will be quite soft, in large animals (for example, moose), the meat is quite tough and suitable, as I believe, only for minced meat.

So, next I want to tell you in more detail about the effect of the gland on the body.
I think it's best to start this topic with the composition of the glands themselves. Castoreum consists of many chemical organic compounds, about 20-25 substances can be found in the public domain, and these are only the main components. It is quite difficult to distinguish organic substances by chemical analysis, so it is probably almost impossible to get the entire list of chemical elements of castoreum. I leave a link to Wikipedia with a list of chemical elements: ”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castoreum
There is also information on Wikipedia: “All those compounds are gathered from plant food.” Since the beaver eats only plant food, there is a fairly logical conclusion that the castoreum is most likely really formed from the plant food that the beaver eats.
The beaver's diet includes: the bark of many woody and shrubby plants: aspen, willow, birch, oak, linden, hazel, pear, apple and even – lilac, pine, spruce, juniper. They consume herbaceous vegetation entirely both on the shore and in the water. The daily amount of food is up to 20% of the beaver's weight.
Let me remind you that the taste of the tincture obtained from castoreum is very different from different beavers. There is a spruce (resin) taste, there is a tincture with a greater or lesser bitterness. I also associate this with the different nutrition of different beavers, depending on the beaver's prey location.
I tried to find some information on research, but unfortunately I managed to find information only from the Russian Agricultural Institute: https://habarovsk.bezformata.com/listnews/kompaniya-nachinaet-proizvodstvo-preparata/19484190/
“Beaver jet is known as a highly effective remedy for intoxication of the body, for many diseases. Its action is similar to the well-known "Viagra", and its biologically active substances are able to trigger regenerative processes in the body.

According to Nikolay Kostesha, there are also confirmed positive results of cancer treatment using beaver jet. The research was carried out during 8 months of 2013 by a group of TSHI scientists: the first stage — in the biochemical laboratory of TSHI, the second — in the laboratory of radiation physiology and biochemistry of TSU. In the control group of laboratory mice with radiation sickness, 100% of the animals died, with the use of beaver jet — only 30%. In addition, when tested for toxicity, the drug showed its complete harmlessness to the human body."

In the US, castoreum is recognized as safe as a food ingredient:https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/10915810601120145
https://www.researchgate.net/public...f_Castoreum_Extract_as_a_Food_Ingredient
Acute toxicity studies in animals indicate that castoreum extract is nontoxic by both oral and dermal routes of administration and is not irritating or phototoxic to skin. Skin sensitization has not been observed in human subject tests. Castoreum extract possesses weak antibacterial activity. A long historical use of castoreum extract as a flavoring and fragrance ingredient has resulted in no reports of human adverse reactions. On the basis of this information, low-level, long-term exposure to castoreum extract does not pose a health risk.

I also found a very interesting Indian article from Act Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences from 2022:
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._an_Animal_Origin_Drug_of_Unani_Medicine
There is a lot of information on castoreum in this article, but the main difference from all other materials is a table with 44 components for which information about doses and effects on the body is indicated. Unfortunately, the components in the table are indicated in the form of medicines. I tried to identify these drugs into chemicals - but it turned out to be quite difficult, so it is not possible to understand the reliability of these data (about the presence of these drugs / substances in the castoreum). Maybe later, if I have time, I'll do it again. It should be understood that there are a lot of substances in castoreum in very small doses, so it does not adversely affect the body if you do not exceed the doses used.
My post turned out to be very voluminous, in the next post I will write about the effect directly on the body, overdoses and other interesting information.

Thanks for that Dmitry

Beaver jet, "it's action is similar to the well known Viagra"!!!!
If we could market this information into mainstream of the male pharmaceutical market castor prices would skyrocket

If find the detoxifying properties are something I want to look into further. Thank you for all your information