Beaver Bait

[luke]

here is a 1728 recipe for Beaver Bait from Virginia

'Tis rare to see one of them [i.e., a
beaver], and the Indians for that reason
have hardly any way to take them but by
laying snares near the place where they
dam up the water. But the English
hunters have found out a more effectual
method, by using the following receipt:
take the large pride of the beaver, squeeze
all the juice out of it, then take the small
pride and squeeze out about five or six
drops; take the inside of sassafras bark,
powder it, and mix it with the liquor, and
place this bait conveniently for your steel
trap [Wright 1966:304].


Yes I said 1728 and Virginia........

[luke]

Here are a couple 17th Century refs to Beaver bait:

The bladders [of the beaver] containing the Castoreum are distinct from the Testicles or Stones, and are found in both
sexes; with which when the Indians take any of them they anoint their Traps or Gins which they set for these Animals, to
allure and draw them thither

Wolley, Charles
1902 A Two Years' Journal in New
York and Part of Its Territories in
America. Reprinted from the original
edition of 1701. With an introduction
and notes by Edward Gaylord Bourne.
Cleveland: Burrows Brothers.

I have made enquiry whether our Indians rub their traps with Castoreum, as those of Canada are said to do, & find that they use a sort wysoccan' (for so they call this too) the making of which is known but to some few of their old men, who keep it concealed as an arcanum of state ( ... ): now were it a castoreum, it would be known to the one as well as the other, for the scent would discover it [Ewan and
Ewan 1970:386 ].

Ewan, Joseph, and Nesta Ewan
1970, John Banister and His Natural
History of Virginia, 1678-1692.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.