Mushroom Hunting

[Wyatt Holm]

Is anyone else interested in finding and eating wild mushrooms? If so how was your luck? Did you find much?
Thanks,
Wyatt

[mike holden]

Wyatt,
You dont say where you are located nor where you intend to hunt.
I do morel hunt here in Michigan each fall, upper lower Michigan near Alpena.

Sauteed in butter, or made into omelets - yum!

Mike

[Al Wasser]

Get a couple of good books with a lot of pictures so you don't kill yourself or get very sick. Mushrooms usually come on in the Rockies in mid to late summer. It can be fun.

[Wyatt Holm]

I have got Mushrooms Demystified written by David Arora. It is very interesting. I have found very few most were very small. I live in southern Utah, near Cedar City and St. George. I would love to find some Morels, but I have mainly been looking for shaggy manes, and blewits. I found a few shaggy mains, but they were to small to be worth anything.

[Thomas Bank]

A few years back I was out at my aunt's in Ohio and hiking up through their woods the one day we came across a bushel or more of morel mushrooms - excellent dinner that evening! :D

[Margaret Turco]

Every once in a while I crave morels. I haven't had any since I was a kid visiting Nebraska but I've always remembered how special they were. I would love to find some growing in the Denver area!

[Jose Kilpatrick]

If you get into mushroom hunting, get you a mesh bag for collecting your find to ensure the spores are released as you trek through the woods. This will ensure their chances of sporulation and further propigation of the species.

[David G Baker]

I am a Michigan morel hunter and eater. Last year was not a good year in my area but with the unusual Winter weather we have had I am looking forward to an abundance of morels this year. I use a magic wand and mesh bag when hunting.

[Gene Howe]

I am a Michigan morel hunter and eater. Last year was not a good year in my area but with the unusual Winter weather we have had I am looking forward to an abundance of morels this year. I use a magic wand and mesh bag when hunting.

Hey David,
I've done a whole lot of Morel hunting and eating but, never heard of a "magic Wand". Whazzat?:confused::)

[Jose Kilpatrick]

A magic wand is used to ward off the faires that protect the mushrooms so you can pick them without being bombarded by sprites and spells. I thought everyone knew that.

[David G Baker]

Gene,
I knew I should have clarified what a magic wand is. It is just a favorite stick that is approximately 48 inches long and is moved around on the ground that helps your eyes focus better and helps you see the morels. Many of my friends use their wand and have been using the same favorite stick religiously for years. Sort of like ball players have their good luck items. It seems to work for them. I am an amateur, I have only been back in Michigan for around 8 years and started hunting a couple of years ago. There are some "VERY" serious morel hunters here.
And what Jose wrote. :D

[Myk Rian]

Wyatt,
You dont say where you are located nor where you intend to hunt.
I do morel hunt here in Michigan each fall, upper lower Michigan near Alpena.

Sauteed in butter, or made into omelets - yum!

Mike
Look at the top of his post, on the right.

[mike holden]

Myk,
When I posted that, Wyatt had not yet put that in his bio.
Mike

[Wyatt Holm]

Somewhere I read that the Morel became a state mushroom somewhere. Was it Michigan?

[Lance Norris]

I live in Ohio, which is prime morel country. I never knew they were called a morel mushroom until several years ago. We just called them spongy mushrooms. My grandfather used to take me hunting when I was a child. He always said..."when you see one, stop and let your eyes focus on the ground. If there is one, there are more..." He was right. My brother always leaves a little of the stalk instead of taking the whole mushroom. He says that leaves a little of the spores for next year. I dont know if this works or not, but I do the same. Once, I found a morel that was almost 12" tall. I was so excited until I picked it, and being hollow, there really wasnt as much there as I thought. They grow at night in warm, moist soil, so a good warm spring rain usually does the trick. In Ohio, they dont really start growing until the May Apples are getting tall. Soak in salt water to get out any bugs and then a little flour and butter in a skillet...mmm :)

[Leigh Costello]

Every year we search for the elusive whopper morel. One year shortly after we moved to our new home, my nephew saw a "huge moldy thing." So he kicked it. I felt as if time had stopped and he was in fast forward. I hollered "stop" but it was too late. He had kicked and proceeded to stomp a whopper morel-12" tall. We have never seen one that size since and he still says, "remember that mushroom?" and I still say, with a crocodile tear in my eye, "yes, and (sniffle or two) it would have been so tasty too!" He lives in Broken Arrow, OK now. Maybe I will be able to taunt him with a picture or two of some morels this year!

[Darius Ferlas]

Where I come from people pick wild mushrooms every Fall. The time when mushrooms are picked is so rooted that it even has its own name in the language This is probably the biggest migration of people each year within the country, as some areas abound in some varieties, others don't. Millions of people pick literally tens of pounds per family. Some mushrooms are then dried, some are pickled.

There are specific kinds of wild mushrooms for various dishes, and some are quite expensive. I buy them in local ethnic stores here. I decided I won't pick mushrooms in North America. I wasn't born and raised here so I don't have the feel for the local plants and I don't know the local mushroom varieties It doesn't take much to get poisoned. Some lethal mushrooms may be very hard to distinguish by an untrained eye from some of the best ones.

A day's worth of picking

http://www.tratwy.pl/Galeria/grzybobranie.jpg


http://members.chello.pl/a.pilinski/fotografie/koszykzprm.jpg

[Joe Chritz]

Looking for Morels is a time honored family tradition. Secret spots (mine included) are guarded closer than the recipe for original coca cola.

I happen to have in laws who love to look for them but don't eat many. A decent bag of mushrooms shows up every year to supplement my supply.

Joe

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Is anyone else interested in finding and eating wild mushrooms?

I take the morels in my yard but that's about it. As a kid I used to take off up Boy Mountain in Jefferson NH picking mushies. I'd most often get a species of Boleta (pores not gills) and fry that up with butter.




If so how was your luck? Did you find much?These days the thing that puts me off it is the bugs. Ya gotta get purdy early in the morning to get there before the scads of bugs do.

[Jose Kilpatrick]

don't mean to be condiscending, but leaving part of the stem when picking a mushroom does not really help propigate the species. Some people even believe that tapping the cap of a mushroom before picking it causes it to release spores. The spores are dropped when pressure in the basdidia reaches a certain point and then the spores are carried away by the wind. Their size and weight relative to barometric pressure allow them to virutally suspend in the air. If mushrooms do grow in the same area each season, it's generally because of survival of the mycelium network under the ground. Though 1 mushroom can release billions of spores, and though it only takes two spores to come in contact and sporulate, the conditions for sporulation to take place have to be perfect, and the microcosm in which it happens either has to have the ideal symbiosis or sterility.
To ensure responsible hunting, it is best to leave a few mushrooms in the general area to complete the life cycle, and carry your find in a mesh bag to allow your spores to continue their journey as you walk through the woods. The method of survival of mushroom species depends on their fruit being picked and eaten to provide a method of mobility for their spores. Some mushroom spores can even survive ingestion and excretion by bovine animals where they later sporulate in manure in symbiosis with a bacteria referred to as firefang.
Though I doubt humans could impact fungi on a global scale to the point of scarcity, the fact still remains that without fungi, this world could not support plant life.

[Westley Rosenbaum]

A guy I work with just introduced me to Morels last year. He gave me a couple and on the same day we even went out into the woods during lunch at the jobsite we were working on at the time, and found more there. They were delicious cooked in butter. I hear they are usually found around dead Elm trees? Anyone know if that's a good starting point? He also said a good time to start hunting is around Mother's Day. I'm in Southeastern Wisconsin, anyone else find that to be a good estimated time?

[David G Baker]

I have heard the Elm tree thing as well. I have several dead Elm trees and have never found any morels around them. The time for morels vary with the weather and vary from area to area. I always ask the experts when I think the time is getting close or I walk through the area where they generally grow on my 5 acres. I have heard that they don't grow under pine trees but that is where I find most of mine. I don't get too many on my place, around 50 is a good find for me.

[Jon Grider]

I'm a frustrated morel hunter. If I get ten shrooms, my coworker will get fifty or a hundred. He just has an eye for them. He claims they grow under dead Elm trees[killed from Dutch Elm Disease] and old apple orchards but I've never found those two areas to be 'sweet spots'.

[Wyatt Holm]

I think it might be where I live, but I haven't found hardly any mushrooms. I think I will have the best chance with shaggy manes and blewits.

[Fred Belknap]

111459 Some I found last spring.