Shrooms

[Jwill]

Anybody else pick a few?

Turkey season opens next weekend, usually when I find a few of these. Last year was pretty lean though...
Morels

Chicken of the woods, these are a couple of the ones I found last fall. Had an excellent year finding them! This was an extra incentive to go wander around the woods training for elk season.

 

[nidahunter]

We go look for morels, but we have another month or so. Looks good!

 

[pseshooter300]

We call them dry land fish here

 

[Bowhuntrben]

Indeed I hunt for them. It will be a while before I expect to find any though.

 

[kansasdad]

Wow Ben! Sacks of morels. Makes my measly findings look so small. How do you use/preserve that bounty?

 

[dainer]

Are these to eat, decorate with, or recreate with??

 

[Biscuit Hunter]

I saw quite a few of these on a hunt a couple of years ago, but I just left them be. I did wonder, though, what it would be like to run across a grizz that had been partaking.

 

[1_pointer]

Very nice morel hauls and pics! I'm planning on getting out this year for them. Haven't even tried for a few years. Unlike last year, it looks like we have favorable soil moisture, now just waiting for some warmer nights to get them growing.

 

[Jwill]

Are these to eat, decorate with, or recreate with??

Strictly to eat for me. I haven't graduated past the "foolproof four" of edible ones yet.

Apparently my father in law once mistakenly identified and ate some bad mushrooms on a trip to his hunting camp by himself, nearly died. I get reminded of this often by my wife.

 

[smarandr]

Strictly to eat for me. I haven't graduated past the "foolproof four" of edible ones yet.

Apparently my father in law once mistakenly identified and ate some bad mushrooms on a trip to his hunting camp by himself, nearly died. I get reminded of this often by my wife.

My sister-in-law is a botanist and she always jokes that she's yet to meet a mushroom expert older than 40.

 

[noharleyyet]

Do they taste that much better than market/restaurant variety? Description?

 

[noharleyyet]

Morchella, the true morels, is a genus of edible mushrooms closely related to anatomically simpler cup fungi. These distinctive mushrooms appear honeycomb-like in that the upper portion is composed of a network of ridges with pits between them.
The ascocarps are prized by gourmet cooks, particularly for French cuisine. Commercial value aside, morels are hunted by thousands of people every year simply for their taste and the joy of the hunt.
Morels have been called by many local names; some of the more colorful include dryland fish, because when sliced lengthwise then breaded and fried, their outline resembles the shape of a fish; hickory chickens, as they are known in many parts of Kentucky; and merkels or miracles, based on a story of how a mountain family was saved from starvation by eating morels. In parts of West Virginia, they are known as "molly moochers." Other common names for morels include sponge mushroom. Genus Morchella is derived from morchel, an old German word for mushroom, while morel itself is derived from the Latin maurus meaning brown.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morchella

 

[Bowhuntrben]

Wow Ben! Sacks of morels. Makes my measly findings look so small. How do you use/preserve that bounty?

kansasdad,

We sell most of them. We will keep the scraps that the buyers don't want (they're still good to eat). Sometimes we will keep all of them late in the season when they aren't paying too much, or if we don't find enough to make it worth selling them.
When we do save some, we usually put them in water with some salt for a little bit to try and get the bugs out of them. We then rinse them in clean water and just put them in a ziploc and try to squeeze most of the air out and freeze them. They keep pretty well if the mushroom wasn't too far gone to start with.
I love getting out and finding these things! We once found probably 50 pounds under one tree, but we found them a little late and they were all mush!

 

[jryoung]

Do they taste that much better than market/restaurant variety? Description?

They haven't figured out a way to replicate morels commercially so those that you find in a market or restaurant have been harvested in the wild.

 

[sweetnectar]

How much do morels cost per pound? I've heard they are one of the best tasting shrooms.

 

[webejmn]

Never picked 'em but always wanted to. Are the pics posted here pretty replicle of what they look like? Been scared of getting the wrong ones. Are some of the bad ones similar looking? I know lots of questions.

 

[jryoung]

How much do morels cost per pound? I've heard they are one of the best tasting shrooms.

This is the highest I've ever seen them, and I LOL'd. Typically they are in the $20-25/lb range

 

[jryoung]

Never picked 'em but always wanted to. Are the pics posted here pretty replicle of what they look like? Been scared of getting the wrong ones. Are some of the bad ones similar looking? I know lots of questions.

Morels are pretty safe as they have very few comparable. Gyromitra are the closest and to me they aren't that close.

I'd highly recommend this book.

http://www.amazon.com/All-That-Rain-Promises-More/dp/0898153883

 

[Bowhuntrben]

There are false morels out there, and I believe they are poisonous. We don't find a whole lot of them where we are at, but there are some. The false morels tend to have a small 'head' as compared to real morels (and long stem comparatively). I usually find the false morels to have kind of a powdery stem too.

 

[TheTone]

Nice looking morels! I worked with a guy one summer who would pick almost any mushroom we came across in the woods and then try to key them out with a picture book when we made it back to the truck. With some of them he took home I often wondered if he would be showing up the next morning.