Since Cova has messed up life in general this year, I have been chasing mushrooms since March. Anyone else guilty of this? We had a decent year of morels, and then chanterelle season hit and we picked until we were tired of picking. We must have picked over 80lbs this summer and are still picking them. After freezing over 30 quarts of them we began to give them away by Walmart bag fulls. Now we have hit the autumn and along with chanterelles we have an abundance of hedgehog and lions mane mushrooms. And we just had elk stroganoff with cauliflower mushrooms ( in my opinion they look more like a lump of egg noodles then cauliflower. So I ask again anyone else into the shrooms like we are. We do research everything before we eat it, and my wife and kids trust me on mushrooms. My 15 year old daughter is a morel picking machine, kinda reminds me of myself as a kid!! So who else forages for mushrooms?? The health benifits are out of this world and they are free!! What more could you ask for??

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Hillbilly with a gun

We find a lot of oyster mushrooms and a few chicken of the woods. I guess I’m too lazy to beat the bushes for morels.


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As a wise man once said, all mushrooms are edible, but some only once.

Well, I could private message you my home address here in Texas so you could box some up and ship them to me. Ha.

Ain't no mushroom picking going on in this part of the country. Would love to try some of the morels for the first time.

Store bought standard mushrooms, (brown, portobello), meh.

Buy them all the time, but, would love to try some fresh picked.

Maybe some day.

Glad you have the opportunity.

bdGreen

I have been tempted to try mushroom picking. I got a book from the forestry dept to identify what is edible and safe here in Pa.

Still for me its scary as He.. going by a picture. Would prefer a in person lesson or two.

Pa has had a ton of wet weather this year and I easily see five or six different kinds of mushrooms when at camp.

The first time I picked morels with my wife about 20 years ago she would not touch them!! She knew we were gonna be poisoned. She wouldn’t touch them until she talked to my sister.
You should have the same mix of mushrooms that I find in Virginia. Right now I would look up the hen of the woods, chicken of the woods, lions mane, and giant hedgehog mushrooms. Those four have no other mushroom in the woods that resemble those.
That is your best bet starting out. Feel free to pm me for any questions. I will warn you it’s like going down the rabbit hole. Good luck. I’ll let you know what I find today I’m headed out now.

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Hillbilly with a gun

I'd like to go mushroom hunting, but I don't think we have anything worth looking for here in New Mexico. Too dry here. I have heard that morels are excellent.

We call 'em Shaggy Manes, and always get a good crop along the edges of our tree lines in the fall. Very delicate ( get inky in a couple days) but delicious.

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John

I grew up picking Morel mushrooms with family, and extended family.
Never have a doubt about what to pick. I did encounter false Morels once a few years back, and conclude they could fool a novice easily.
The only other ones I pick are Fall puffballs. My Mom said her Father knew eight types of mushrooms to pick. My son in Idaho calls it a mushroom heaven!

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It's what I do, not what I am.

I love mushrooms. I consider a steak, prime rib or good cheeseburger very bland if it does not have plenty of mushrooms on it/with it.

One of our family friends was a serious woodsman and has picked plenty of mushrooms over the years. He tried on many occasions to teach me but I never got comfortable doing my own picking.

With that said back in the 1940s my undertaker father buried 4 members of a family for eating the wrong mushrooms. They were only here from Italy for under a year and picked mushrooms. They picked ones that they thought were the same ones they knew in Italy. Unfortunately for them they looked right but they most definitely were not.

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14 S&W Revs none with locks!

My wife and I forage for mushrooms here in Utah. Sure it is a desert state but the mountains can be good for mushroom picking depending on the weather.

This year was a bit of bust due to lack of normal Monsoon summer storms. It has been super dry so our summer crop of Aspen Scabers, King Boletes and Chanterelle's were almost none existent. Spring morels were okay but the season was short. Oysters fruited now and then and we picked our fill this year.

A few days ago a bunch of Shaggies popped in a local school's lawn. No knowing what chemicals were used treating the lawn so we just admired them.

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Bill Bates

Suetonius in his book The Twelve Caesars calls mushrooms “the food of the gods”

That’s because Claudius was thought to have been poisoned by his wife, Messalina, so her son Nero would become emperor.

Claudius was subsequently deified by the Roman Senate. The mushrooms turned him into a god.

Well I went out today and found a a nice chicken of the woods mushroom today. I’ll be frying it the same as a piece of chicken battered up and seasoned. Can’t wait to start cooking.

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Hillbilly with a gun

When young, my father took us to a Dairy, just north of SF Calif.
where we walked the green hills and picked "Pink under" that looked a little like Puff Balls but never got too big, so we needed at least a ball cap full, for a meal.

We have some right now in our back yard, but it is from over watering and not the eating kind. First year that this has happened, or that we noticed it.

Nothing like some large mushroom slices browned and placed next to a nice BBQ Steak !!

Mr. Bates,

Love your Opinel! Stainless even! Excellent mushroom knife

I bought that knife last year and had it engraved as present for my much better half. She is way more serious about mushroom foraging than I.

It just occurred to me; when she collects a mushroom she hasn't seen before I'm the one that has to positively identify it and sample it before she will eat them. Should I be worried???

I snapped this last year while we were collecting morels. This woman owns more sets of camo than she does shoes.


Here is the knife and a pretty mushroom you don't want to eat.

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Bill Bates

I used to have some acreage, and access to a few other properties where morels could be found. One day a neighbor knocked on my door and asked if I had any morels in my woods. There is no right answer to this question. People do not respect private property when it comes to morels. Say yes, and you will have to sit out with a shotgun in your lap. say no, and then it’s “Then you shouldn’t mind if I look for myself”.

All you can say is “stay the **** out of my woods, Boris”. Even that won’t keep them out.

Morels have really good natural camouflage. You can look right at them without seeing them. Then they suddenly appear, as if from nowhere. An electric thrill goes through the body and you can almost hear the Norman Bates shower music.

Puffballs can be pretty good eating, too. I used to ride dirt bikes on a south Dakota ranch where the puffballs grow out of cow patties, sometimes the size of volleyballs.

That is about the extent of my mushrooming.

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Not in jail.

I have no idea, when I was young, why we were not hunting and eating mushrooms. My daughter tells me that when she was young and would visit my parents, my dad would take her mushroom hunting and my mother would fix them. The land around the little town that I lived in had lots of areas that would grow mushrooms.
Just a little humor concerning mushrooms came from a Col. that I worked for. His definition of his time in Washington was that it was like a mushroom farm, you were kept in the dark and covered with ****.

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Mighty 90's,Trying 4 a 100!

Not wanting to tempt fate or my own judgement lately, I just stick with the Giant puffballs!

See mushrooms a lot, but don't know anything about them. Unwilling to take a chance and too old to learn( My excuse). I love eating store bought ones.

I think I'll do my mushroom picking at the Weis Market.

You must have plenty of farmers markets or roadside stands in the area you live . They know what there doing and many time the cost and the amount they give you puts the stores to shame.

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14 S&W Revs none with locks!

I use to feel the same way about wild mushrooms. the I found out there are a number of easy to identify mushrooms (beginner mushrooms) that don't have any toxic look alikes. Giant Puff Balls, Oyster Mushrooms, Aspen Scabers, Porcini really don't have any toxic look alike. Morels and Chanterelles have a few things that might be confused for them but really aren't that close if you do a little study.

You start with the easy ones and work up from there is you want too.

Eight or ten years ago a friend mentioned that he picked morels mushroom while spring bear hunting in Idaho. My response was how did you dare. He told me that morels really didn't have any close look alike that were toxic. I googled morels and kind of got interested in finding some.

The next spring while scouting for turkeys I also looked for morels. After a few weeks of looking I found the first one and then another and some more. I collected them and then battered and fried them that evening. My wife absolutely refused to try one. She said I could kill myself if I wanted two but she wasn't going to eat even a bite. I ate them all and they were so good.

As you can tell I survived. I showed her what I found on the internet and how I was certain what I had eaten was a morel. So we went and picked some more. She loved it. She called it an adult Easter egg hunt. We picked about 10 pounds in one afternoon. We cooked some for family and friends and we dried the rest.

Now I have a number of good mushroom field guide books. I try to learn a new mushroom every year. I collect lots of mushrooms and bring them home and try to identify them. Nothing gets eaten until I'm 100% certain what I have. Some are pretty easy to identify. Others pretty difficult and you might need to use chemicals and a microscope to identify them.

Part of that is taking a spore print and that is fun. Even my grandkids like making spore prints. Basically you cut the cap off the mushroom and put it on a piece of paper to see what color od spore the mushroom has.

Here is a spore print my three year old grandson made and gave me as a Christmas present this year. This kid lives in Washington and there are always mushrooms, of different types, growing. This is his spore print from a Prince Mushroom (Agaricus augustus) it is a choice edible. {art of positively identifying this large mushroom is its dark chocolate brown spores.



Here is one of my favorite mushrooms the Aspen Scaber Stalk (Leccinum insigne) it common in our mountains during the summer. This wasn't the best look example but it sure taste great. No look alike that will make you sick but a few that taste very bitter.

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Bill Bates

Shaggy Lepiota is my all time favorite, rare in these parts. The last great find was while taking my son fishing at a local lake where I knew a guy that ran a nice campground. He was waiting for me to do my business in the outhouse, when I came out he was holding this beautiful Shaggy Lepiota we call them (The Prince of Mushrooms) I asked him where he found it, he pointed behind the house, here was a cluster of maybe a dozen...all over 4" diameter. I took four and left the rest, fried them in butter with fresh cooked trout we caught, my son said "Dad those mushrooms taste like a steak." I just said "Yeah, now you know the secret." With all the burns there should be a great show of Morels in the spring, burns are usually good for mushrooms, huckleberries and hunting in the fall. I like to eat puffballs while they are little round pearls out in the field, they have a nice peppery flavor, pop them in your mouth. I know what is on my grass and when the little fairy ring mushrooms pop up I eat them. I look forward to the Chanterelle crop to come into our local grocer, although spendy they are worth every penny and go with Salmon like nothing else.

Morels are the only ones I am certain about, so they are the only ones I pick. Another good reason to look forward to spring in Kentucky.

I use to gather morels. I had a neighbor who was the laziest guy I knew. When he saw me loading up guns or fishing rods he would holler, don’t forget the neighbors. Well I was cleaning morels one day when he stopped. I gave him some. A couple days later he stopped and told me how good they were. He said he would like to hunt mushrooms but didn’t know good from poison types. He as me how I could tell. I told him I always give some to neighbors and watch to see if they come out of the house next day before I would eat them. He didn’t sponge anymore mushrooms.

Hasn’t been to bad a week of foraging. I found my first black trumpet, a 12lb hen of the woods, along with some hedgehogs and sheep Polypore.

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Hillbilly with a gun

You guys are making me hungry. What's the best caliber for mushroom hunting?

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protocalldesign.com

My wife and I had a doctor appointment Saturday and I happened to look at a big swamp oak and stopped in my tracks. My wife asked what’s wrong, and I just point to the tree. The base was covered in hen of the woods!!! I didn’t weigh it but all together it was over 30lbs!! The doctor got him a nice piece after I picked it. And have another piece of property to mushroom hunt that’s private for once. Sorry for the ****** pic in advance. Needless to say I don’t think I’ll need to buy mushrooms for a while.

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Hillbilly with a gun

Yea, I don't like the one mistake and you're out odds. I have been mistaken before why press my luck?

This one looks interesting It is 5" in diameter and 5" tall. Must weigh a pound!

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Some collect art; I shoot it!

Looks like if it don’t kill you, you’ll probably wish it had! You would probably take a trip and never leave the farm!!! Lol I research and make dang sure as to what I’m eating. Most I pick don’t have any deadly look alikes and are easy to distinguish.

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Hillbilly with a gun

You should send her up here. Not as many hunt mushroom and camo not needed. You don’t have to sneak up on them. You can spend camo money on steak to serve with them.

That pretty mushroom is a Fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) sometimes called a Santa Mushroom. You don't want to eat that one. It may or may not kill you but it sure will make you sick along with some other bad things.

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Bill Bates

Investigate Nicolas Evans author of "The Horse Whisperer" and mushrooms.

I'm glad to see Marshweeling's reference to one of my favorite mushrooms, Puffballs. I love many kinds of mushrooms, but especially Puffballs. A friend of mine in Southern Ohio, used to save them for me from areas that he knew. Some of them were larger than basketballs. We used prepare them, by slicing them about 1/4" thick, dipping them in a whipped egg batter, Rolling them in Soda cracker crumbs, and then grilling, or deep frying them. I could make a meal of them alone, and eat 'em 'till they run out of my ears.
Chubbo

^^^^^

It's good to hear from you, Chubbo.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Went out yesterday before my daughter had to start school. We found a lot of blewits which went into our elk Burger and gravy. The wife made lionsmane crab cakes with jalapeño and cayenne pepper added to it and all was excellent. Pics below , and Sunday I get to take out a wife and her kids to give them some pointers.
Sucks I ya e to take them to my honey hole, but she is really nice person

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Hillbilly with a gun

Back in my more "spiritual" days these
were easy to find in the local pastures.

I learned mushroom identification from Timothy's book.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan