Not all hunting is with guns; mushrooming

The morels are up in the Big Woods. If you need anyone to protect and watch your spot where they grow, let me know and I’ll take care of them for you. I’ve been a mushroom hunter for a long time. My grandmother and uncle took me out picking meadow mushrooms one sunny, spring day when I was in single digits and it has remained a passion ever since. I started hunting morels in conjunction with turkey hunting when I’d hunt them on the way out of the woods at noon. It has been a family tradition to serve morels to the mothers in my family on Mother’s Day for as long as I can remember.

While morels are a favorite of mine because they are hard to find; having small specific habitats during a short fruiting season. They are not my absolute favorite mushroom to eat nor are they the only edible mushroom in the woods through the year. One year in particular, in a friendly competition, a friend and I set out to see how many different species of mushrooms we could collect and eat in a year. I believe we each were in the forties with some overlap as we each collected fifty some different edible species. So, if you miss out on morels, there are other delicious and easier to find opportunities! Morels are one of the easiest and safest to identity in the woods, being one of the “fantastic four”: The distinctively safe edible mushrooms; chantarelles, morels, puffballs, chicken mushrooms.

I’ve joked before that mushrooms have managed to survive without a “mushroom commission” bureaucracy to protect them. They are self-regulated as most people avoid mushrooms because of the chance of poisoning. No licenses or stamps are required to collect them either, not that that can’t change someday. Although psilocybins, “magic mushrooms,” that are hallucinogenic are illegal, a schedule 1 controlled substance

with a penalty for possession being up to a year in jail and $5,000 fine.

Often even amongst shroomers, there is the belief that you need to leave some mushrooms and carry them in a mesh sack to help propagate the species. This is not true as when the cap hits the surface and opens, it sends the spore airborne. Mushroom spores go into the atmosphere and so can repopulate vast areas a far distance from their origin. The fungi you pick on the surface is merely the fruit of the organism, called the mycelium which lives in the ground. The largest and oldest living organism in the world is the mycelium of the honey mushroom (a delicious edible) that covers nearly ten square miles under the blue mountains of Oregon. I do keep the caps I pick in a breathable sack as in plastic they can “sweat” and become mushy.

While not prolific here, morels do grow in Cameron and Elk counties. The first morels up are smaller and black. There is a brown morel and towards the end of the season, around Mother’s Day, they are larger and yellow. They are found under dead elms, apples, and sycamores in our area, among other trees. Rarely have I found them under coniferous trees but I have found a handful over the decades. They like alkaline, loose soil like from old fill dumps. I like going out early in the morning after a night drizzle and early fog.

If you find a mushroom spot, as my buddy Muddy asks, “How do you keep a mushroom spot? You never share that spot!” Which is true. If you do share the location of a spot, you might as well share it with a crowd because it’s going to draw a crowd anyway. If you want to have a reliable spot and save being disappointed in humans; keep it a secret.

See you along the stream.