I don’t use much lure at all these days but when I do it’s just a little dip in the jar with a weed stem. When I do use lure at my coyote sets it’s something like beaver caster or mink gland lure.
Post sets get either a squirt of pee or a caster smear.
Buying commercial lure to me is expensive for even a little one ounce bottle. I try to select something attractive to more than one species like beaver caster or mink gland lure. Muskrat gland is another good option for me. Everything can be caught one one of those three. I can pull out the bottle on water or land line with confidence. I can’t always claim that with cat or coyote gland lures. Some cat and coyote gland lures I can confidently say I’ve never had good luck with at all.
When I first started trapping I bought a lot of lure and hauled lots of bottles in my bucket to every stop. I probably used way too much.
Bait though I do use a decent amount at each dirt hole set maybe a heaping table spoon or so. Commercial predator bait is getting expensive too and many all claim to have same ingredients.
When I can I am using chopped rat carcasses it’s about a quarter of a rat down the hole. Same with rabbit or other carcasses I accumulate in my freezer for bait. A neighbor saves some deer scraps for me from his butchering and I use chunks of that down holes too.

First we have to agree as to what is “a lot”, or “too much”.

Is a pea sized glob perfect but a navy bean sized glob “too much”.

Trace amounts on a dipped stick perfect but the pea sized gob “too much”.

It is subjective.


Someone made a comment about lure being expensive. It is, I agree, and getting more expensive. But in the grand scheme of trapping expenses, bait and lure is pretty darn cheap in the long run, even if you use “too much”.

My post was focused on lure (although we could debate the difference between bait and lure, I admit). But edible bait is different. For coyotes, I love draw stations -- entire beef cows, an elk carcass, multiple deer, a pile of dead sheep. The more, the better.

I remember Big O saying his best success was loading all the bait he could get on his digging trowel and tossing it down the hole. As Boone Laine said, there are a number of variables (time of year, type of bait, weather, temperature, etc.) that will factor into the equation but in my mind, bait is different than lure.

No doubt baits and lure are in different categories. Not only in physical characteristics but the amounts that can or should be used. Some only use a marginal amount of bait while others seem to like to load up with the big dose down a hole. I have done all of it over the years.

I still come back to using slight lure amounts and moderate bait amounts. Each will find his preference as to the results they get. If your system works for you, keep it up.

If not, you may need to keep experimenting with amounts. There are variables that are all over the place and always will be. I only know what has worked well for me.
Likely in some cases it may not really matter what you do. If conditions of good animal populations and moderate trapping pressure are the norm, the sky is the limit.

Coyote density and coyote paranoia also play a factor in lite amounts.

In Central Texas, nearly everyone shoots, helicopter hunts, calls, and traps coyotes. I trap 10 months a year doing private Predator control. My county has two full time government trappers. Our coyotes have seen it all.

I’m always looking for something different. Something mild. And I use just a little bit of lure. Like the head of a match stick. Or at most a Q tip with only the top half dipped into the lure.

Laz mentioned edible baits.

What percentage of commercial prepared baits (and lures for that matter) do you suppose are “edible”?

I know I know, they’re all technically edible, but how many are actually palatable to the point where once something gets a taste of it they still want to ingest it?

I know more than a few that are NOT. And they must taste REALLY bad for a canine that routinely eats cow crap and half rotten stuff to shake its head and say “nope!”. Haha

I agree with bait usage that more is better. The only time really practice this is in this area during the winter. Seems like the bigger pile in certain areas works very well. I will often use lure in more amounts to get critters to that area. Once they are there the fun begins.

Decided since everyone has weighted in on the topic it was time to quiz the coyotes. So today I took two lures, not my own, but lures from long time respected, well known lure makers and made two test sets with each.

Two punch holes about a foot and a half apart.
One with just a small twig dipped in the lure.


One with as much as I could get on a knife


All on spots with recent coyote activities where I've got coyotes to work test lures in the last month.

One lure I use to trap with put have never really tested. Be interesting to see if they dig for it. I believe it's this particular makers top seller.

One I bought a year ago at the advise of another trapper I respect to test against my own formulations. It has consistently got dug in the past.

The small amount went in the hole on the left and large amount in hole on right at all the sets.

If anyone else wanted to run same tests it would be interesting to compare results.

My $$ is on the knife full for the win?
For me the knife full would be about a average gland lure application, but 3/4 of it is going under a rock or cow chip.
Home made lure so not too worried about the cost.

To me those are both small amounts Yes Sir. Try the little stick on one hole and 1/2 to 3/4+ of an ounce in the other.

Somewhere around here I’ve got a letter I saved from many, many years ago I got from Carrol Black.
I had asked him a few questions in a letter I sent to him, and he replied with some of his thought. One was on lure usage at predator sets.
He told me when he was pursuing cats and wanted to avoid coyotes he would really load up the set with lure. And when coyotes were high he would use a small amount of lure. These were in dirthole sets, same sets, same locations. He was purposefully changing amount of lure he used to target a species pursued.
He did note that for coon…you can never have enough bait or lure in the truck.
Jim

I got another lure from another maker I was going to test along with a single lure ingredient or two. I'll up the game to at least a half Oz on them

I like those trappers that use 1/2 an ounce to an ounce of lure per set. I bet you could use that dirt hole for a couple of years and not have to worry about re luring that set for a while. That might be the new trend in the trapping industry.

JabNE, I have seen that in my own anecdotal experiences.

Last year I was testing a new commercial bait on the line. I didnt have time to test it prior to using to see how it stacked up. I was initially using a big glob (3-4tbs maybe) and noticed that my sets werent producing until they had sat for a week or more. When I started using less (maybe .5-1 tbs) my sets started getting hit quicker and more often. Now, I dont know that the commercial bait I was using was a highly desireable one, but I know that using smaller amounts of it got more and quicker action. It did get more interest than one sniff and leave when it got hit as well.

Im wondering if certain ingredients lend themselves better to larger quantities than others

What does it mean when your German Shepherd chews the lid off a five gallon bucket of bait and eats half of it? Edible?

Definitely should have used less

Yep^ my dog is worthless to test on as far as edibility. She likes to eat everything I put in front of her and will happily gobble up ingredients that other animals say are useless from a taste perspective

do population levels make a difference to the reaction of coyotes to the amount of lure applied?

1/2 an ounce!?!?! You told me 1 ounce was a SERVING SIZE!!! Did I use too much or is a bigger glob better?

Did the 3 night check. 2 test sets got dug, one each for each lure. Both set the hole with most lure clearly got dug hard which equates to me more attraction too me. Other two sets had some activity but no clear digging. Might have been deer as I've seen them regularly paw and walk all over test sets before. I'll check them again after 7 nights.