All animals have anal glands, not all species react the same to gland lures, however. Not sure what sort of reaction a groundhog gland lure would illicit.

We produce a ghog gland lure, paste and fluid type. Been usin it for many years. Very effective on ghog and predators. Most all your canines and felines will take ghogs if given the opportunity.

A very favorite food source for fox and coyote. In fact so much, some areas around here have very few ghogs any more.

Many have moved closer to structures in an attempt to survive. Much like the red fox have done over the years once the coyotes moved into the area.

It's enlightening to understand the anatomy, function and evolutionary origin of scent-producing organs, as well as the basic chemistry of the excretions themselves. Some glands are pretty specialized and actually produce specialized substances, such as muskrat glands (called Beer and Meyer organs), which produce big ring molecules of 17 carbon atoms (a musk related to ambrettolide). Other glands basically produce a mixture of fats, mucus and shed cells of the internal lining, but the bacteria that live in them ferment and break down those primary excretions into smellier substances (fatty acids, ketones, ...). This is how anal glands work. And anal glands are modified sebaceous (skin grease) glands
Cats mark territory not just with urine, but also with their faces (i.e. sweat glands).

Castors are interesting, they're anatomically very different from most other odor-producing glands and seem to mostly serve as a backup excretory system to support the kidneys, to help beavers deal with the specialized diet with a lot of tannins, flavonoids, various resins, etc. in the bark. They seem to be less affected by the hormonal differences between males and females than the secretions of the anal glands, so a plausible assumption is that while castor excretions mark the presence of beavers as such, the majority of information about sex and age comes from anal gland markings.

There's a lot of freely and not very freely available research on these subjects (morphology and chemistry of scent signals of mammals), mostly published in the 50's through 80's, it may not be directly applicable to luremaking but I've found it pretty educational, just for overall understanding of how animal smells work...


plus there are tons of other behaviors connected with smells... rolling in pee, marking members of the group with excretions or pee, self-anointing, ...

again, I'm no expert and I'll never have a chance to apply most of what I know. I'm just curious...

Odor recognition of a ghog gland formula to a predator is an excellent bait / lure I have found over the years. It isn't discussed much probably due to the fact that it isn't used alot or considered by many or they don't wish to share the info. Now that the cat is out of the bag, others will be trying it out most likely. When I have two sets out side by side, 10 ft or so, I always catch on the ghog lure first. Just my experience.