Heaven (for some folks) is a little brown fungus that’s the American version of the much-treasured truffle. The taste – unique, the season – short, and the find – rare, makes these little morsels as much fun to hunt as any wild game, whether you like the taste or not. And so it was, during my formative years of mushroom hunting with my grandmother, that I came to love the find as much as the food. We could simply walk up into the woods, which was full of dying trees during the dutch-elm epidemic of the late 1980’s , and not walk 20 yards without stepping on one. South slopes, humbug. Elm trees? What do they look like? Morels were seemingly everywhere.
Fast forward to this past weekend, when fellow IDO member Pat Howard made an offer I couldn’t refuse. He’s had the mother of all elm trees, a former deer-stand location, which has been kicking out morels like a conveyer-belt, and he offered to have me come and help him hunt them down. Of course, by “hunt-them-down” I mean pick them under the tree. Being that Pat seemed to think it would be so easy, I decided to bring my two sons, Isaac and Micah, to make it a bit more of a challenge. That, and I knew they would love being in the woods with us.
On the drive over, I was careful to temper my expectations. I knew Pat had picked the area a week or so before, and I also knew that with the kids with, our day could be over quickly. I’ve always tried to keep it fun and interesting for them so they enjoy it too. That said, with expectations kept-in-check, I was more than ecstatic to find our first morel more than 30 yards from the base of the tree, a whopping 2 minutes into the hunt. Pat and his wife, Lori, proceeded to help the kids find them by the fistful, which didn’t take much considering most of the yellows we picked were huge and well…..they have small hands. Now I don’t pretend to know that much about morel hunting, but I do know that discovering this many in a small area elicited childhood memories of finding grocery bags of them with my grandmother. These are deeply held thoughts that I hold very near and dear, and my hope is that this experience has come full-circle with the introduction of my children to this spring-time pursuit.
Back to the “mother-tree”…this elm really was the epicenter of the morels, but it also served another, more-important purpose. It helped keep spore in the area, and turned otherwise smaller, plainer elm trees with otherwise little potential, into trees that also had large numbers of morels. In other words, we had a hillside of morels to find. Other hillsides were searched as well, to no avail this time. However, after fully picking it and spending a few hours on the producing hillside, we gave it a rest then came back, only to find another half bag. No doubt the kids have somewhat an advantage in the game being they’re so much closer to the ground. Ground plants and understory which block our views are things they see right under.
As a note, be careful out there folks, wood and deer ticks abound. I checked the boys nearly hourly, but Micah still managed to have a deer tick attached that we found when we got back to the house. Even more reason to check out the Gamehide Elimitick line of clothing. I was wearing the pants and the hat, and of 20 or so ticks picked off of everyone, not a single one came from me. It works so well, I’m wishing and hoping that there are kid’s sizes soon. I know Pat and Lori already have a set on the way. Thank you Pat and Lori for the great memories, mushroom “hunting” will never be the same.