Hunter,
Welcome to the forum !
I live in Middle TN - in the highland rim area south of Nashville.
When I first started hunting seng it was around 1977 (sophmore in highschool) and back in the late 70's early 80's there were several seng hunters around here. It was not all that unusual to go hunt somewhere and find plants that someone else had just harvested.
Now days it seems like most have stopped hunting seng. I guess many of the old timers either died out or quit because of health issues and most of the new timers are just not into seng hunting.
Kids now days are just into video games, music, TV and getting out and tromping thru the woods just does not appeal to most of them.
I expect in years to come the number of folks that actually get out and hunt seng will be even lower.
Some folks say that wild seng populations are deminishing, will be come extinct some day BUT I see just the opposite around here.
Every place we go and hunt we find plenty. We dig the mature plants only and plant back the berries.
A few years ago my Nephew asked me about hunting seng and I took him and trained him up and he was hooked after the first trip. Now he calls me all of the time just to talk about seng hunting, where we are going next, etc. There is no doubt in my mind that he will be a seng hunter for life.
I also have a 8 year old son and I am doing my best to get him hooked on it as well. I take him out in the woods here close to home and help him spot ginseng. I am going to take him on a dig or two this fall - may wait until leaves are yellowing and berries are red (when it is easy to find). It will also be a bit cooler then - that is probably the ideal time to teach someone.
We are also going to buy a pound or two of stratified seed this fall and plant several patches/beds on my property here (30 acres) which already has some decent wild seng growing on it.
Anyway - since the seng hunting pressure around here is fairly low I have never pinched the top of any plants and probably will not do that. I can see if you were in a area where there were lots of diggers and especially if they were harvesting the small plants that might help a few more to survive to live another year.
That does happen quite a bit (naturally) though. Deer or other critters often eat the top of a plant before the seng hunters arrive. I also know that a ginseng root does not always send up a top - they can just skip a year at times.
On several occasions while digging a root I found another nice root right next to it that had no top at all.
I have been crusing my property here for the past several years (a time or two) just checking on the ginseng and I know exactly where most of them are growing. From year to year some \"mature plants show up\" where there were no tops showing the previous year.
They could have skipped a year on the top, or a deer or other critter may have eaten that top.
Ginseng does have that working for it to help protect from being completely wiped out of a place by a single years agressive digging.
Good Luck at helping your seng continue to thrive in that area !
TNhunter
