Any mushroom hunters here?

I'm hoping the fact that this early spring has so far been ridiculously wet will mean an abundance of mushrooms in about a month, but the science of what makes them grow is a mystery to me, so I could be way off. Anybody else enjoy this hobby? If you've never tried it, give it a shot. Unlike most hobbies it' not a giant money suck. All you need is the ability to walk, and a bread bag. A few hours alone in the woods is incredibly therapeutic, and they are friggin delicious.

Can’t wait! It’s been crazy wet here, too. Last year we probably pulled 10 lbs. of Chanterelles out of the woods behind our house!

I have been casually hunting for morels most springs since I was a child.  I have heard various theories about what they "like" and where they might be found, but I have seen very little pattern on where they appear personally.  They seem very ellusive and mystyerios indeed.  

I know my grandmother on my father's side was known to do it in the "old country," but I have not inherited a desire to do so.  If I buy the wrong cut of beef at the supermarket, well, I've got a tough piece of beef.  If I select the wrong kind of wild mushroom, it's off to the happy hunting ground.

The only place I've been able to reliably find them was on the golf course I used to work, and they used too much fertilizer there for me to ever eat any of it... 

There is a stream real close to me, I'll probably go through this spring and start looking. 

I used to be.  (Don't get me wrong, mushrooms are disgusting and are clearly not food. Serious personal bias there, long story, my apologies)  I spent my childhood searching for bracket fungus, specifically Ganoderma applanatum.  My father is a wildlife artist and he used to preserve and paint on these mushrooms.  We would go for hikes and get $1 for each paintable mushroom we found.  Spent a lot of time in the woods searching.  

Cool huh?  But these mushrooms went extinct.  Biologists don't know why, but they disappeared from the woods almost entirely.  (He now paints on crosscuts.  http://www.naturewoodart.com. Sorry for the shameless plug, but he's my old man!) 

In reply to pinchvalve :

Bookmarked. Very cool stuff. I know what to get my mother for her next gift. 

​​​​​​   I have been a casual searcher of the morel mushrooms for many years. I just picked up this guide book in hope of expanding my horizons

I have 3.5 acres with a creek in the back, and have often wondered about "seeding" desirable mushroom spores through the woods and wet areas. Anybody hear of doing that??

In reply to dculberson :

I believe that Michigan State University has developed a method to "seed" morel mushrooms

Just make sure you know what you're looking for.  Here in California, there's a type of mushroom that looks very similar to one that's commonly eaten in Asia.  Unfortunately it's not the same and the name for it here is a "death cap", because if you eat it then a couple days later you need a liver transplant due to the toxin.

In reply to dculberson :

I've heard of and seen trees available to buy that have truffle mushrooms inoculated into their roots.

Plant them, give them a couple years, and you have truffles.

I had a friend in grad school who would eat mushrooms he could not positively ID.  When I asked him about this, he said he could ID the ones you should not eat. 

Years ago I was doing an environmental assessment on a property that was n old driving range tha someone had grazed cattle.  Numerous cow paddies had mushrooms growing out of them.  I always wondered if those were the "good" ones.       

So...how do you tell the good ones from the deadly ones?

ultraclyde said:

So...how do you tell the good ones from the deadly ones?

AIUI, there are some mushrooms that can be identified as safe, there are some that can identified as deadly, and there are some that can't be definitively identified at all.

Personally, I mostly don't even eat commercially available mushrooms, so I'm certainly not going to go hunting wild ones. :)

In reply to ultraclyde :

It's a two step process:

1. Eat

2. Wait

spitfirebill said:Years ago I was doing an environmental assessment on a property that was n old driving range tha someone had grazed cattle.  Numerous cow paddies had mushrooms growing out of them.  I always wondered if those were the "good" ones.       

An old hippie friend used to have a cow or two, and he claimed that magic mushrooms grew in the poop of cows that ate millet in addition to their normal grazing.

We get some pretty righteous toadstools, some are going on 8 years old! All of these pics were taken in my yard.

We also get a few types of interesting fungus from time.

I wouldn't say I'm a "hunter", I'm more of a "haver" of fungi.

pinchvalve said:

  (Don't get me wrong, mushrooms are disgusting and are clearly not food. Serious personal bias there, long story, my apologies) 

 

This is clearly the only correct answer.  

spitfirebill said:

 

Years ago I was doing an environmental assessment on a property that was n old driving range tha someone had grazed cattle.  Numerous cow paddies had mushrooms growing out of them.  I always wondered if those were the "good" ones.       

Perhaps those are the ones they call "Shiitake" mushrooms?

My dad's part of the family is 100% Italian, and there was always someone in the family, be it my grandmother, uncle, my dad, or even a family friend, who would go to the town's state forest and look for a certain type of mushroom. They called it "nassca" or something like that, and it was only grown on a certain type of tree (maybe some sort of oak?) right at the base of the tree. Similar trees would have a mushroom that was close to it, but was poisonous, so you had to know which ones to harvest.

My grandmother, uncle, and dad would take these mushrooms, clean them, and then fry them up in a batter/flour mix along with cauliflower and sometimes chicken cutlets. It is unbelievably good and like nothing I've ever had. They were crispy and meaty at the same time, and taste very clean. My grandmother passed away 15 years ago, and neither my uncle or dad has gone hunting for them in years (uncle is in his 80's and dad has bad knees), but every once in a while a family friend will pop in with a bag of "nassca" 'shrooms and I get the call to come over and have some. It's like hitting the lottery! I should probably figure out what they really are one of these days while my uncle and dad are still around so I can keep that tradition going.

In reply to Tony Sestito :

*Sounds* like Chicken-of-the-woods or Hen-of-the-woods. Ring any bells?

ultraclyde said:

So...how do you tell the good ones from the deadly ones?

I’m in GA too, and I don’t get too adventurous; I’m mainly looking for Chanterelles and Morels. There are “false” versions of each, which might give you indigestion, but aren’t poisonous, and you have to be a special kind of “special” to confuse the “false” ones for the real deal after 5 minutes of googling.

In reply to EastCoastMojo :

That last one is Lion’s Mane! EAT IT!!! Good and good for you!!!

In reply to poopshovel again :

Some critter beat me to it, it's long gone. When I first spotted it, I thought it was an albino hedgehog.