Like everything else this spring the morels are appearing late, about a week or two later than most years. My parents walked a trail on Friday and found a few small ones - a limited number of warm days and, more importantly, too many cold nights seem to have held back growth for the 'shrooms that have already pushed through last fall's leaf litter. We were hopeful that a warm Saturday, a less cold Saturday night, and a warmer Sunday morning would spur growth in an organism that sometimes seems to appear in an instant.
After finishing some tree planting I headed to my go-to spot for morels, The Slaughterhouse Shortcut trail:
If you've read my deer hunting entries you're already familiar with The Slaughterhouse, one of my favorite, and most productive, hunting spots. A few years ago I discovered the trail to The Slaughterhouse is a very productive mushrooming location as well.
It didn't take long to start finding signs that morels should be growing. Fiddlehead ferns were growing on and along the trail:
Wild ginger was wildly abundant:
Bloodroot flowers were in bloom....and prettier than this awful picture. Not sure why I didn't give a better effort on this one:
And these mushrooms were here and there along the trail. My dad has always called them "inky pots" but that's not their real name. Anyone know what they're called?
It took me years to find my first morels....not literally years - that would be ridiculous - but many trips through the woods over many springs. I used to never be terribly enthused about searching for them nor did I have any idea what they looked like prior to being picked. I knew their shape and color and size, of course, from seeing them after being picked by my parents. But seeing a mushroom in a pail is a whole different ballgame than seeing one on the forest floor.
Luckily, I've got two habits that have helped me become adept at finding these tasty spring treats. One, I'm a noticer - I see what is there to be seen. I take my time, both by moving slowly and by stopping often, and absorb what's in front of me as opposed to just taking a look. And two, I'm really, really good at walking with my head down and eyes on the ground....which is vitally helpful for spotting mushrooms but an Achille's heel of mine when I'm deer hunting.
Eventually I was able to start finding some morels on my own, and over time those two habits have helped me hone my ability to spot even the smallest morels peeking out of the leaves. Not really sure how to describe what to look for....and not really sure that I want to. Morel secrets are about as sacred as blueberry patches and fishing holes.
I wasn't too far down the path when I noticed the first morel of the season, unfortunately a false morel. Lighter in color, the false morels are not edible and will cause anything from sickness and dizziness to, in some cases, death. The key in knowing the difference between a false and real morel is in the taste. If you eat one and tastes like death, you probably shouldn't have eaten it. Sorry, 'shroom humor is dark. No, the real key lies on the bottom of the frilly head of the mushroom; on a false morel the frill (pretty sure that's not the scientific term for it) is not attached to the stem. A real morel's frilly stuff is fully attached.
One of my tenets in morel hunting is if there's one, there are two. And if there are two there are probably three. And so on, meaning if one is found it's best to search the immediate area for more before moving to pick the spotted 'shroom. False morels especially like to grow with friends nearby:
Poisonous false morels aren't the only danger to the mushroom hunter - one must always be on the lookout for snakes:
Snakes freak me out. Trust me, there's a snake sitting just this side of the log's shadow. It was tough to get a better picture because A) I sure as heck wasn't gonna move closer, B) it was hard to control the shivers and shakes, more commonly known as "the willies", I believe, and 3) it's tough to take good pictures in one direction when your body is running in the opposite direction.
I was going to crop the picture to zoom in on the snake, but while studying the picture I noticed something. Near the bottom right corner, next to a four-leafed green plant, is what would have been the first real morel of the day! In my terror at seeing the snake I never noticed it.
After recovering from the snake encounter of the worst kind I continued down the trail, and within a few feet of the last picture I spotted my first morel:
Heeding my own advice I stood in place, scanning the area for another. Sure enough:
Not heeding my own advice I moved to pick the second mushroom I spotted before grabbing the first, and then noticed this one, which I had obviously stepped on:
I thought about cropping those photos to make the morels stand out a little more....but these images are much more realistic. They don't exactly leap out from their surroundings, do they?
My Slaughterhouse spot turned out to be a dud today. I found one more small morel and many, many more false morels. Knowing my parents had not picked all the morels they spotted I wandered through that trail and did find another dozen or so that were big enough to pick and probably 15-20 more that were still tiny. My dad had mentioned a clump of morels that were as tiny as any he'd ever seen, and I found that clump. Didn't get a very good picture of it, though:
Oh, and one more discovery of the day was the amount of work I have ahead of me this summer. The two trails I was on today were a fraction of the length of trails we have cleared on our property. And if the other trails have as much blow-down litter as these two did......
As I came back to the four-wheeler at the end of the looped trail I'd been walking my stomach was telling me it was time to head in for a Mother's Day lunch. I've been lucky with my timing the last few years, being able to visit my north woods while the morels were plentiful. This year I was about three days too early. Win some, lose some.
Last tidbit: I use old orange (the fruit, not the color) bags for carrying morels. I've been told this allows their spores to fall out and to the ground, effectively "planting" new 'shrooms. I have no idea if this is true or not.....7th grade biology was so long ago. Seems like sound advice, and I like reusing stuff, so why not? The bags constantly get hooked on brush though, so spores or no spores I'm not sure if I'll continue to use them.
All done. Never thought there could be so much to say about looking for a mushroom, did you?
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