In the past I've used logwood dye, log wood crystals, sumac berries, and green walnut hulls. Sumac berries and green walnuts are currently out of season. I may have a chance to boil this week. What's considered the best alternative to any already mentioned that can be easily acquired?

Maple bark works, available year round.

I like alder bark, don't know if you have alders in your area.

Easily acquired?

Collecting berries, bark, hulls is not near as easy as ripping open a plastic bag of powder trap dye and pouring it into a pot of simmering water .....but that's just me.

To each (cheap person)......his own...lol

I’m dying traps soon I’ll do the powder bag stuff if just way quicker I’ve got a lot to get done this summer.

Bark is your only option at this time of the year for natural dye or oak leaves

No alders here. I'm thinking of cutting some smaller walnut branches (walnut trees everywhere here) and stripping bark to use.

If I don't get it done this week I will wait for green walnut time. They work great.

I suppose Dakota Line speed dip could be an alternative.

I use Sumac berry's and Walnut Husk's. Save the leftover water, and use it again. next fall or the summer.

Sumac bark. Fresh and easily peeled this time of year. Can be used fresh or dried for later use

Sumac bark I can get. Was busy today picking cherries and collecting dry? sand for making waxed sand. Rain has started and will be here until Thursday according to NOAA.

Turtledale, I never save the leftover solution. Usually don't clean traps until mid July but hoping to get it done sooner this year. If it drags on I'll get green walnuts. We have walnuts by the thousands here.

I use soft maple leaves I put a five gallon bucket of them in a fifty five gallon drum and fill water to about 2 3rds full bring to boil put traps in for a couple hours let it cool over night then bucket out the water and start over till all traps done

I have several black walnut trees in my camp yard. I gather up the fresh fallen nut ( in hulls ) and put them in five gallon buckets, with lids. Let them sit till next summer. ( Make sure squirrels and mice can’t get at them ). A year later, there’ll be about a gallon and a half of thick black liquid in the bucket. Strain out the walnuts and hulls. Mix the black goo with water and boil. Makes a great dye.

I’ve got several properties that allow me to pick up black walnuts so on the good years I pick and shuck’em then dry the husks rock hard. The tannic acid in the husks last for years if kept dry and avoid molding. Two double handfuls of those husks is a 30qt pot to steep and I have high-powered ink!

Thanks Seldom. I always watched the hulls just decompose on the lawn. I'll save some green ones this year and dry. Walnut hulls do a great job in the tub.