TOPIC: Morel Mushroom Hunting

Well the mushroom hunting season is just around the corner. I have a pic attached below of some early greys that had not turned blond yet that we had found early last April of 2010. If we would have left them there for a few more days they would have grown a bit more and turned from gray to a light tan. This is a pic of one of my mushroom hunting buddies Jason holding some of them. They were pretty big for greys. I think this year is going to be a great one!
Good Luck,
Latt

Latt, Have you got out yet? I found 4 small blacks this evening. These were from a very good producing area that I have known about for years. They were all pretty small and took quite a bit of looking to find. Just getting started here.

5prong,
I have been out 3 times. Everyone is finding blacks. My two black spots are probably loaded. However the one woods got sold and the new owner was nice about it, but he said his son is going to hunt the woods and we cannot go any more. I can appreciate that. The second black spot is almost the same story. So I am out trying to find a new Black spot. My gray and yellow spots are just not producing yet. But the blacks are up right now here in central Ohio. The fella that owns the woods that I planted some ginseng on has found over 250 blacks in the last 3 days. All 2 to 3 inches and some even up to 4 inches. But for now I am batting 000.
I will get some here soon thou.
Good luck,
Latt

Hmmmm. I have been finding a few.

Hey Shroomers...

I have had almost no luck finding morel's and have been out looking a few times.

Only found 1 and it was a black and about 2\" long.

I would sure like to find more.

A few questions for you folks that have experience at hunting morels.

My woods here is dominated by oaks, Chestnut Oak (we call em mountain oak), white oak, red oak and other Oak varieties too. We do have some Hickory, Poplar, Mapel and others but definately dominated by Oak.

Do you only find morels around dead trees ?

I have probably looked around 1000 or more dead oak trees and found nothing.

The one I found was just a couple feet out from a dead poplar tree.

Do you ever find them around dead oak trees ? wondering if I am wasting my time looking aroud dead oaks.

Do you find them more in hollow bottoms, on hillsides or up on ridge tops ?

Seems like many of the youtube vids on morel hunting I see may apple around where they are hunting, and mayapple around here mostly grows in hollow bottoms or flats in big creek bottoms or at least very low on the hillsides.

A few months ago Billy emailed me and said he has has some luck finding them around dead sycamore trees - and around here we mostly find those in big creek bottom type areas.

I just gotta find some more of those morels.

So far I have only hunted right here close to home and the area behind my home has some decent sized hollows that feed down to a main creek area and it is all timber.

I own 1/4 interest in a 800 acre tract of land that has some larger hollows and fairly large creek bottom areas in it. Wondering if I might be better off looking over there.

Any tips you guys can toss out I will sure make good use of and will greatly appreciate.

Thanks

TNhunter

Nice finds and Pics SHROOMY!
Yep you are knocking them dead. I am in search of a new black spot. I am sure my two black spots are loaded but I cannot go in there anymore. Oh well this happens now and then. Time for me to find a new black spot. Heading out now.

TN,
Blacks grow around Ash, Poplar, Elm and primarily. Grays and yellows will come on later after blacks and grow around the same trees as blacks do but also grow around hickory, apple trees and a few other trees. Also dead trees (Slick with no bark) especially Elm do not always mean you will find Morels. Now if you find a small Elm in the process of dying where the bark is slipping off here and there, you will more than likely find some morels.

You will not find any morels around Oak or Maple. However Oak is great for some summer mushrooms like chanterelles. Oaks are also associated with The Hen of the Woods, AKA Maitake.
Good Luck.
Latt

Wow Latt, sure is different for me. How many years have you been picking morels, and how many per season?
TNhunter, I think I may be able to help you out a bit if the season isn't already pretty much over where you are at ..... all I ask is you keep what I tell you to yourself. Can you do that?
If so email me at ..... This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Latt,

Thanks for the advice.

It will help me a lot just knowing not to spend any time looking around dead oak trees.

We don't have many Elm or Ash trees here - I think some disease wiped out most of the Elm and I don't see a lot of Ash trees either (not in our typical hardwood forest areas).

We do have poplar though and hickory and sycamore with the sycamore mostly being found in the lower areas of larger creek bottoms.

What about Pine trees ?

I have a spot I can hunt that has around 300 acres of pine and they thinned them out last year (cut about 1/3 of them) and left the rest. So there are lots of stumps there that are fairly fresh - do they grow around stumps after a place has been logged ? or does it have to be a standing tree that died ?

Also on my 800 acre tract we have about 15 acres of 30 year old pine (white pine, loblolly).

Also on the location - do you find them more in the hollow bottom areas or up on the ridges ? or does that matter as long as you have the right kind of dead trees ?

Thanks

TNhunter

Shroomy.

Wow - now that is a nice bunch of morels.

One things for sure you are not having any trouble finding them

I would be happy if I could just find 6 or 8 - enough for a good mess for me to try out real good.

I emailed Billy to get your email address but he emailed back a while later that he could not find your email address. He said he chatted with you some on facebook but I don't even have a facebook page, just have not got into that.

Anyway - if you want to talk by email I do have a email address on my profile that you can reach me at.

I don't check it very often but do every once in a while.

Another question for you guys...

When you find a big mess like Shroomy did there - how do you put them up ?

I saw (think it was Kduce) showing drying them on a window screen.

Can you just slice them in half, top to bottom, and place them on a screen to dry and then after dry store them in zip lock bags ?

Or do you freeze them ?

If I ever do get lucky enough to have a big mess like that (more than you can eat in a day or two) would like to know how to save them for later.

Thanks

TNhunter

TN,
I have tried all kinds of ways to keep Morels from going bad. Drying them is one option and K_duce shows one way to do that.
I think I posted this once before but here we go as this is my favorite method.
Take your mushrooms and rinse them off. Slice them in half long ways first. Many say the flavor is in the spores and if you soak them in salt water it takes away some flavor. Anyway once you rinse or soak them put them on a towel to let them drip but not dry. Then use what ever method you like to use to coat them in dry flour. Take the mushrooms coated in flour and place them on a cookie sheet so they cover the sheet but are not laying on top of each other. So they are just one layer per sheet. Place them in the freezer until frozen. I stack the cookie sheets right on top of each other and it wont hurt to compress the mushrooms a bit. Sometimes I may have up to 10 cookie sheets a day in the deep freezer if its a good day in the woods. Remove them from the cookie sheet into a large ziplock freezer bag and put back into the freezer. They will be solid like a frozen french fry. They are good like this for 6 to 12 months in the freezer.

Now anytime you want some mushrooms simply take them out of the freezer bag and fry them up like you would normally until golden brown. The flour coating protects them in the freezer and it is handy as well when you want to fry some up as they are already coated with flour.

I still have some left from last year and we eat them often. They taste like they were just picked and fried up. I am trying to get them out of the freezer to make room for new ones.

I have many people tell me they freeze them in water like some do with Walleye fish fillets. This will leave you with a mushy and soggy morel mess once thawed. I do not recommend this method at all.

To anyone new to mushroom hunting.
If you ask for advice you will receive all kinds of advice from many. So you have to do as most of us have done in the beginning and wade through it and use what works for you when it comes to mushrooms. There are many good people out there eager to help Outdoorsmen like yourself that have an interest in mushrooms. Be careful of anyone claiming to be an expert. Most good mushroom hunters are willing to help but will not claim to an expert. I am not an expert either.

Be careful to anyone out there using the internet to ID mushrooms. I see many Mushroom pics labeled incorrectly.
And just because it says something on the internet does not make it a fact. Morels are fairly simple to ID. However there are the False Morels and people that hunt morels can tell them apart easily. However, I have picked False Morels out of new mushroom hunters bags a few times and told them not to eat them as they can make some people really sick. The two false morels are the Gyromitras and the Verpas.


Good luck,
Latt