Well the first thing that i can say to you is that down here, we are starting to see signs of the season beginning to end. Up by you though, you might still be able to find an abundance of them. At the beginning of the season, usually at the beginning of May, morels will tend to pop on the south side of the hills because that is the hill side that gets the most sunlight. Although morels tend to concentrate in areas with dead elms, they also will sometimes grown in pines, poplars, and white ash trees. My favorite is the dead elms of course. Dead elms look just like live ones, only without the leaves. The bark is usually distinct from the bark of other trees. If you want to see some elm tree bark, try doing a search on google or something. About the dead elms though: the best kind are the ones that are just beginning to loose their bark. This year my dad and I found a few pounds under a big tree that hadnt even lost any bark yet though. Avoid the trees that have lost all or almost all of their bark.
As the mushroom season progresses, you will notice that a lot of the morels will start to dry out and die on the south facing slopes. This is when you turn to the other sides that recieve less sunlight, or you can simply drive north.
Also, there are many things to look for and look out for when it comes to mushroom hunting. There are yellow morels, grey morels, black morels, and half free morels. They all look like a morel but they have distinct differences from each other. You also need to avoid false morels. These do not look anything like a true morel in my opinion, but to a beginner, it may…If you need to know anything more about morels, visit this website: http://www.mushroomexpert.com and look under the morel pages. It will tell you anything and everything that you would ever need to know about morels and false morels.
As far as eating the morels, my dad and i just simply slice them in half, sometimes into even more pieces depending on the size of the morel, and we roll them in flour. Then we fry them in a pan of melted butter until they are golden brown.
I sure hope this information helps because it took a while to type!
Good luck finding your morels, and enjoy eating them!
PS: in case you didnt know, These baby’s will sell for about 15 dollars a pound depending on where you live. If you are in to taking a plane trip out to New York with them, You will get 75 bucks a pound!!! Personally, I would never sell any unless i got more than my dad and i could handle. If we got over 10 pounds than yah…but these are just too good to pass up!
