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Gland removal and collection is easy. When you are about to skin your animal, grab it by the tail and bend the tail back to expose the anus. Notice that the skin around the anus is devoid of fur. Cut all the way around this naked skin. Skin the animal as usual. When done, come back to the carcass, take your knife blade and cut a deep circle all the way around the anus, but be careful not to puncture the colon. Once the cut is complete, grab the anus and pull gently. You will pull out a few inches of colon. Cut off the colon, leaving anywhere from a couple of inches up to 6". This is what you want for making gland lure.
The two glands are inside the naked flesh of the anus. Just take a pair of heavy duty scissors like the gardening scissors you can get at Big Lots, and start cutting up the anus and colon into tiny pieces. Put these in a small jar. Go back to the carcass, take your knife and gingerly slide the blade just through the thin abdominal muscles close to the hind legs. Don't run the knife in deep, or you might puncture the bladder. Gently pull the sides of the abdominal wall away to expose the bladder. Grab it carefully so as not to squeeze it. Gently pull the bladder out of the carcass enough so that you can sever the urethra with your knife. Pinch hold of the urethra so the urine doesn't spill out. Hold it over your jar of cut up gland pieces, and squeeze the urine from the urethra opening into the jar. When you have emptied the bladder, you can proceed to cut up the bladder with your scissors into tiny pieces, too. You don't have to include the bladder if you don't want to, but by adding it to your glands, you will have more material to work with. If you can't get any urine to cover the cut up gland pieces, you can pour a little distilled water in the jar- just enough to cover the glands. This works as a substitute for urine and I have done this in the past when in a pinch and didn't have any bladder urine to add.
Put the lid loosely onto the small jar. Put the small jar inside a bigger jar. Put the lid on the bigger jar loosely. By putting the lids on loosely, it allows for gases to escape as the ingredients begin decomposition. The large jar prevents flies from getting to your gland jar and laying eggs in it. Let the materials rot over the summer in a dark, cool place. I rot my glands in a corner of the basement and can hardly notice the smell unless I open the jar to check on it on occasion. Once the stuff has rotted down, in say late September or early October, you can begin to finish the lure. To finish, you can strain out the remaining chunks if you want to, or else leave them in- either way still attracts animals. Add some sodium benzoate to the gland lure to stop decomposition. After a week or two, add your glycerin to make the gland lure freezeproof. It is ready to be used when trapping season rolls around. You will need to shake it or stir it as needed. That's all there is to it. Nothing complicated. And, you save money over paying someone $4 per ounce to buy their gland lure, plus you have the satisfaction of catching critters on lure that you, yourself, have made. Good luck with it.
You can also add the gall bladder to aid in the rendering down of the glands; the gall is located on a lobe on the liver, it is greenish in color with a transparent sack. Use a very sharp knife when removing it.
You can add stuff like ear butts and footpads to your gland lure and they won't hurt it, but those things won't make the gland lure any better. If you wanted to, you could rot the whole carcass and collect the juices from it and that would make a lure in itself.
Submitted by Steven Miller
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