anyone have any tricks? It get very cold were I am, -50 sometimes...every oil/paste base I have tried seems to quit at -20 or so...tried vaseline, peanut oil, glycerin...sardines in soybean oil and noting seems to keep smelling when its cold

Some ideas...
A few guys have been playing with BLACK colored lures to utilizes the sun rays to heat up the lure and get the skunk odors active.
Lot of old timers claim that peanut oil will allow a lure to stay active in cold weather...I see you know about that...stick with it and experiment a bit
Chunks of bait that the birds can get to might create enough of a mess on the bottom of the tree to "call" marten to your trap site.

-20 to -50 temps are brutal not sure any lure can operate up to full potential in those extremes??
Be careful

M a r t E n : Marten

Martin is a bird.
Ie : Purple Martin

Even in French Canada it is : m a t r e

Super Lube Grease don’t freeze until -45. I use it as a base in my call lure, never had it crust over.

I have to override my spellcheck to spell it correctly. It will time and time again correct my spelling even when it's right.

My impression is that since glycerine is pretty much non-volatile but stays runny in very cold weather, it creates a scent-proof film on the surface of the lure dab when used as a standalone base/solvent, and in wet weather, it washes off because glycerine is water-soluble and actually draws water from the environment.

I don't know if my idea makes much sense, in terms of surface tension physics and such, but I thought that an emulsion, i.e. a mechanical mixture of polar (water-soluble) and nonpolar (grease-soluble) substances with different volatility would ensure that one way or another the lure will have enough holding capacity for various volatile substances not to lose strength fast, yet those substances will be able to make it to the surface and beyond in any weather, including cold spells, rain and freeze-thaw cycles.

I use a mixture of sun-rendered oils, glands, glycerine and vodka-based castor tincture in my sweet marten lure as the base. To make it homogeneous, I use emulsifier, and add a pinch of thickener (guar gum) so that it's not too runny and has some volume. For very cold weather, I add maybe 1/5th more castor tincture, by volume, directly to the small jar that I take with me.

The lure stays soft at -20F and below. I think it works well. It stinks, everything it touches stinks, including myself, and marten get caught.

you can try cat fish cream mixed with beavertail oil what ever you smear it on the only way it can be removed is to be chewed off i still add glycerin
but when the set is finished i use a small pocket torch to scorch the paste

Tatiana,
Based on where you are, how close are the Marten you catch to what people refer to as a 'Russian Sable' ?
I've seen Marten caught along the NW coast of Alaska, that were extremely dark, with nearly no throat patch and very silky.
Unlike most of the ones here caught throughout the main land of the 'Lower 48'.

The ones in your photo seem similar, but there is that one, which appears a lot darker.

The sable is a distinct species of marten (the genus Martes).
Used to be around 100 miles, now it's 20 minutes on foot.
Where I live is NOT good marten habitat, according to classic science. Birch forests and lots of open spaces. Until recently we did not have any marten or sable here, only smaller mustelids (Mustela).

About 10 years ago both pine marten and sable started appearing and now we have both species here, but pine marten are more numerous. There are some hybrids, too. Unclear where they came from but looks like they keep arriving, and they're becoming numerous and are putting a lot of pressure on our game birds, hares, etc.


I caught this pretty thing not far from my home but it seems to have migrated here recently because it had Siberian pine pitch mats in its fur, and the nearest taiga forest is about 90 miles away from here. It smelled different, too, much better than pine marten. Indistinguishable from the sable they catch on the Barguzin river.







Most of them are pine marten. A couple seem to have sable admixture but it takes a trained eye to see. The two short ones are sable, I boarded them differently. Pine marten are less variable in color than sable, rarely have any vivid yellow/orange hues in their body color, and almost always have huge throat patches. They also have longer coarser guard hair and longer, very bushy tails. Slightly different faces, too.








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One of the organic chemist that I worked for developed/patent a polymer that was put onto the bottom of boats that reduced drag/water resistance......wonder what that would do mixing in some marten lure attractant
Thank-you for your contribution Tatiana

one of the best "unconventional" chemicals I've found to be useful with marten has been methyl anthranilate.

It seems to be attractive to marten in itself because it smells like grape soda (fox don't seem to be deterred by it either, even in high concentrations), but more importantly it's a very powerful bird deterrent. To them it's like what mace is to mammals, but more volatile. Really helps where birds are a problem. No more countless jays clogging the sets. I add it directly to bait.

Tatiana do you have many Raccoons in Siberia i just wondered how they reacted to the Methyl Anthranilate

None luckily, just some raccoon dogs.
But like I said, it seems to hold at least some attraction to foxes, and foxes are generally cautious here and normally don't approach marten/sable sets closely. Raccoons should be even less cautious?

I've posted this picture before. As you can see, there was no snow or any other severe weather conditions that would have forced the fox to do this, no scarcity of food, so I guess it was just food curiosity. The box was baited with fresh beaver meat with perceivable amounts of methyl anthranilate because it's in an open place with plenty of inquisitive magpies.




I think it's a chemical substance worth investigating by the trapping community (along with some yeast metabolites such as sotolone)
You can buy a little bottle to experiment, it's inexpensive.

https://fraterworks.com/products/methyl-anthranilate

you are awsum