TOPIC: TNhunter 2014 Season

Saturday October 11..

This will be the last hunt for me. Obvious at this point that might as well quit going.

I got in the woods just after daylight and came out at 10:30.. and hunted some good woods. A place that I found quite a bit in 3-4 years ago. Only found 5-6 plants today and most of them we looking nasty bad.

Found one up at the head of a hollow that was under some saplings and had some cover and was still looking good, except very yellow.



This was by far the best looking one of the day. Found 3 others about the same size but they had prongs missing and the leaves had gone past yellow to brown.

Nothing to brag about... but at least I did find 4 diggable 3 prongs on my last outing this year.

These were between 8 and 12 years old.

Hanging up the old digger for the year.

It has been a good season, had a lot of fun digging and seeing all that you folks harvested too.

Now will just let it dry and hope for higher prices in November.

TNhunter

Now that's a digger! I've been using just a good sturdy hand spade. It's tough to say goodbye to the season for sure, but we have to let mother nature take its course. Glad you had a good season and I enjoyed the pics. We need a ginseng off season section where we can post hunting and fishing or whatever stuff. Not much to talk about on wild grown in the off season..

Wildspirit...

That is a good old digger. Love the long handle digger and it makes a great walking stick too. You can beat back the briars, check for snakes, and it sure makes it easy to get those roots out.

It is sad to see the digging season end. I walked out 3 short hollows that faced to the north (where I found about 10 oz 3-4 years ago) and then looked in 2 other longer hollows too.

Only found a few still standing in 1 of those 5 hollows and they were all up at the head in some thick cover.

I am sure there was a lot of seng in those hollows, it's just down and out now.

In the off season we do post threads on hunting, fishing, trapping, etc... so do keep posting and visiting thru the rest of the year.

TNhunter

TNhunter wrote:

Mortis - it is a Case \"Canoe\" Knife.

I lost my 20+ year old case knife in the creek this summer fishing for smallies and black perch.

Had to get me another and got this one online (off Amazon).

It has the amber bone handles and the blade metal is the CV (the old original case knife metal, not that stainless steal stuff most newer knives have).

I have a Lansky sharpener... and after using the fine ceramic rods on it, then stropping it a bit on my old leather belt, it will whittle hairs.

That is that CV metal doing that. It sharpens up real nice. Best I remember I paid something like 50.00 for it. Was not bad at all.

Found it on Amazon again just now. Link below.

www.amazon.com/Case-Cutlery-Pocket-Chrom...ywords=case+canoe+cv

TNhunter

Very nice, I'm a big knife collector. It's a hobby that I pursue even more than ginseng. I think my father has the exact same knife with same handles. Very nice, and it's hard to beat a Case knife.

TNhunter wrote:

I went on a short hunt this evening on a fellows property that goes to my Church.

His place had been logged (select cut) not all that long ago and was mostly grown up in briars and thick stuff. Hard hunting.

We did manage to find 3 - 3 prongs... and a couple 2 prongs.

Only 2 were diggers... one of the 3's only had 3 leaves on one set and I leave those. It did have a couple berries and I planted them.

We ended up taking home 1 root each.

Could have been worse... at least we did find a few.

ONE more root for the pile.

GI - it's funny how you are still finding some green and here where I live on both ends of the county (east and west wise) they are all in the ending stages of yellow to very pale yellow. All we found this evening were very pale yellow.

I am going to give it another try on Saturday.

PS... below is a pic of that really nice 4 prong I found 7-8 days ago. It was nice and green when I harvested it and had a big wad of berries.

Since then I have had it sitting on the bar counter in the kitchen... and all week it has been slowly turning yellow. Nice shade of yellow now with some streaks of green left in the leaf centers.

TNhunter

Awesome pic TN! I had to quote you so the pic would be reposted.

Nice tn good to c u had a good season

Well folks...

My 57 oz of green is nice and dry now... and I took it off the window screens today and weighed it.

16.4 oz.

Just made that pound with a bit to spare.

57 oz = 3.54 lbs... so my green to dry ratio was real close to 3.5 to 1.

Got me a nice pile of fine hair root off the screens and picked out 15 nice keeper roots (small old roots with long necks) to eat this next year.

Now just need the price to go a little higher.

TNhunter

TN,

Glad you got your lb. +
Sure dries down a lot doesn't it.
What is the price in Tn. right now?