Hey Guys...
First hunt of the year went to a new spot I have not dug before. I knew going in that it was a bit iffy (on the high side elevation wise).
Started off nice, found several decent plants and many right along a county blacktop road (several nice big 3 prongers you could see from the road).
We got started at 6:30 am but after a couple hours of decent digging we ran out of it. The land we could hunt on started out around 690' elevation wise and went up from there. We could not hunt down the hollow (no permission that direction).
Ended up being one of those trips where you do a lot more walking than you do digging (I prefer it the other way around)
We did not find any 4 prongers, but did find a few nice 3's and several 3's that were just big enough to harvest. Found a mix of red and green berries and left several plants behind to hunt another day.
I took my wife's little digi cam but she could not remember where she put the usb interface cable so I can't offload the pics right now. Think I will pick up a SD to USB adapter this evening so I can get the Pic's off and post them. Only took a couple of nicer 3 prongs and the pile of roots at the end.
Ended up with 16.16 oz (just a bit over 1 lb) green.
Something I have started doing that I wanted to share.
From that digital topo maps site I printed a topo map of the site we hunted and marked where we found ginseng with HI-Liter pen and marked the places we looked but found none with a big X.
I also wrote in the year we hunted 2010 and will file this away to keep for future reference.
In 3 years or so will re-visit that site and it will be nice to have this kind of information when going back. That spot would make a decent evening hunt or some time when we have just a couple hours to dig.
Best of Luck to you all this season !
TNhunter