Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Trapping Wall Nut Hulls

I've read for years about using Wall Nut Hulls to dye traps but being the lazy bastard that I am I've always taken the easy rout and bought Log Wood dye....
Well there's several Wall Nut trees along the road to my shack that drop hundred of nuts in the fall so this year I decided to start carrying a sack with me to gather some on my daily walk down to the mail boxes.....
They're about done now but I ended up with a gunny sack full of nuts and a five gallon bucket of hulls...so with Cat season about ten days out I got ambitious this morning and cleaned/dyed/waxed my traps using about two gallons of the hulls for dye....
I'm pleased to report that the hulls do indeed work like a charm....my traps look great....

The added perk for my daily scavenging is putting a handful of nuts under a big ol Maple in my drive everyday for the Squirrels to fight over....
It's like Squirrel MMA out there.... Watching em battle while I cook breakfast every morning puts a smile on my face that lasts till noon........when I put another pile of em out so they can entertain me while I make lunch...

God I love retirement.....

It's funny you mention it. Many times I take a pocketful of walnuts with me when deer hunting, since there are so many squirrels around.

I throw a few out and watch the squirrels while waiting for a deer.

Always a bonus when you finally get around to doing something and it actually works.

I never had the ambition for anything other than Logwood crystals.

Yea....I was surprised at how well they worked.....
My traps actually look better than when I used the logwood dye....
Course I probably used twice as much as I needed but there's plenty more where those came from....
The only down side is you have to pick a few hulls out of the traps but it's not a big deal....

I used the hulls 30 plus years ago, but use the log wood dye currently.

Both work.

I chuckled on the MMA and squirrels.

I just finished up dying and waxing my traps this past Thursday and Saturday.










Can't wait till Wednesday, as the rain is supposed to stop, and traps are going out.

Congrats on the retirement FieldGrade!

God Bless,
David B.

Those look good...
I use the same anchors but no spring....cats don't fight a trap like coyotes....

Good luck and have fun...

I used to cut a lot of oak and oak sawdust dies traps also. I preferred it to commercial die.

I use black walnut hulls to dye my traps also.

Another use for them is to dye hunting clothes. I have a camo shirt that has been washed so many times, it was turning white. Put it in a bucket with walnut husk and water for a couple days. Dyed it a dark greenish brown, but it doesnt have any shine to it.

A friend up in Bonners told me he makes wood stain out of em too....

Now that I know how well they work and have so many of em (and plenty more were they came from) I might try that just for S&G's....

I used to cut a lot of oak and oak sawdust dies traps also. I preferred it to commercial die.

I always did the black walnuts too. It was done on a day we'd be raking leaves in the yard. Easy to keep an eye on while raking/burning the leaves.

A friend uses sumac pods to dye traps....

Walnuts were bringing $15/100wt (record price) here this year, trucks were lined up on the highway 20 deep completely full of them. The huller has a pile of hulls from the last several years, it would take a convoy of 100 trucks to haul all of them away. Could probably dye 1 or 3 traps with them.

I've used walnut and butternut hulls when I couldn't get logwood crystals, also sumac. I've used the cold dip you mix with gasoline. They all worked okay, caught foxes, coyotes, etc. These days I've gotten lazier (and I like to think a little smarter.) I just use Rustoleum, then wax.

I know they're expensive at the grocery store....
The vegans would have a break down if they saw me dumping out paper sacks full for the Squirrels....

What color are the traps after the sumac treatment?