Homemade Predator Bait

I am attempting to make my own Predator bait for the first time. I plan on using tainted Muskrat. Can someone tell me how many days I should let the meat taint? Is 5-7 days sufficient? Or should I wait longer or shorter?

How much meat do you have? If you have a good bit, divide it up into two or three portions and put different ages on it.

I only have 4 pounds and I was going to leave 2 pounds fresh and age the other 2 pounds - just don’t know how long I should let it age.

5 to 7 days is plenty in this kind of weather, you may want to stop at 4 or 5 days. You don’t want them to rot , just a little off .

Thanks I appreciate the advice!

Are you grinding bones and all , or just chunking the meat ?

Field dressed the rats and I ground the meat and bones.

Perfect, leave as much as you can . I remove the guts and leave the heart liver and lungs, even grind the head . I added a half cup of canning salt and a quarter cup of honey and a tablespoon of vanilla per rat and had very good results.
A cup of bacon grease will not hurt the recipe any .

Does the honey, vanilla and bacon grease attract the coons? Because I want to minimize my coon catches and concentrate primarily on coyotes.

It’s rare that I set a coyote trap where I could catch a coon . That being said I run a 4# pan , so if I do catch a coon it’s usually a bigun.

By the way the honey is a preservative and mold inhibitor .

In case you're using sodium benzoate, remember it takes about a week to fully do it's thing