Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

Well, I do believe its spring, temperatures are warming up, the snow geese have moved through and the turkeys are strutting.

It’s also that time of the year when an infectious disease attacks avid outdoorsmen and women that live throughout the upper Midwest.

It can infect men, women, children and it doesn’t make any difference if you’re young or old!

What causes this infectious disease is a fungi that’s will soon be among us, it’s the morel mushroom and once they start poking their heads out of the ground, men and women will leave their home, family and job heading for the river bottoms, island and hills on mushroom hunting excursions.

Morels are found throughout the upper Midwest, are easy to recognize and delicious, making them the most sought after wild mushroom.

Identifying them from other mushrooms is easy. Morels are elongated with an off white stem and a crown that is made up of white with dark brown pits or indentations.

They vary from off-white to gray in color. The simplest way to explain what a morel looks like is to look for a mushroom growing on the ground that resembles a cone shaped brain.

They start to appear in the spring when temperatures reach around 50-60 degrees.

When’s the best time to start looking for morels? Well, according to some of those experienced old timers, you’re just wasting your time hunting mushroom until the oak leaves are the size of a mouse or squirrel’s ear.

Honestly, I’ve never known anyone who’s measured a squirrel or mouse ear, but I’ve been told that they are about half the size of your smallest fingernail.

There are several indicators that tell you it’s time to head out and start looking for morels.

If you have a lilac bush in the neighborhood, keep an eye on it and when it starts to bloom, it’s a good sign that the morels will be out.

You’ll also want to watch the crab apple trees as about the time, they start to bloom which is generally the week of Mother’s Day as this is when the morels should be the thickest.

Others use the almanac to figure out the time that morels will start to appear. If you look in the almanac, take the average date for the last frost in your area and then add two weeks to that date, you should put be pretty close to the peak morel season.

Of course, moisture, humidity, sunshine along with warmer temperatures has a lot to do with when morels appear.

If you have a week of 55-60 degree during the daytime with no freezing temperatures at night it’s generally be a good time start looking for morels.

Along with warm temperatures, moisture is also important. Many mushroom hunters say that the best time to hunt for morels is after a rain, when temperatures are around 60 degrees with high humidity.

Morels appear earliest in the sandy areas, on south facing slopes or in fields that have been burnt as these areas warm up quickly and retain heat longer.

One of the most asked questions pertaining to mushrooms is where do you find them?

You’ll find the first morels appearing on islands in the river, sandy areas and in fields with dead or dying trees.

My most successful hunt was along the river, early in the season in a cornfield that hadn’t been planted yet. The field was loaded with them.

It was a new field cornfield and until a year or so before had been a wooded area. The decaying roots from the old elm and cottonwood trees that were grubbed out made for ideal places for the morels to take root.

I’ve also found mushrooms around trees that had been declining for several years, eventually dying, had fell over and were lying on the ground.

Mushrooms seem to appear around these dead cottonwood and elm trees about the time that their bark starts to fall away.

The first morel is always the toughest to locate because they blend very well with the forest or vegetated ground. Once you’ve found one, kneel down, looking closely because morels are like Perch, if you find one you generally find a bunch.

One thing is for certain when it comes to finding morels, there’s no set rules as to where the morel might be located. Conditions change from day to day during the spring and a hillside that was barren on Monday may get a rain shower or warmer temperatures, causing the hillside to be loaded with morels by Wednesday.

My preferred method for locating mushrooms isn’t real scientific; it’s the old wonder around aimlessly method, picking my way through the vegetation until I spot one.

It’s a good idea to stop from time to time and kneel down, getting a birds eye view of the area as many times as morels will be pushing up through the leaves and can be verily visible.

For years, morel hunters have hit the woods with bread sacks, ice cream buckets and other non-porous containers. Some seem to believe that these things have lead to less morel mushrooms.

Since a mushroom reproduces through spores that need to be returned to the ground in order to grow.

Once picked and places in a solid container like those mentioned above, we’re denying the morels the opportunity to disperse their spores and to re-seed the area.

In order to allow the morels to throw their spores, it’s not a bad idea to use collection bags that are porous such as onion bags or some type of a bag that allows the spores to be release back into the air.

Mushroom hunters or shroomers as they’re called down south have their own language and in mushroom hunters’ jargon, a bunch of morels is known as a “mess”.

Once you’ve found a mess of mushrooms, you’ll need to clean them up.

The first thing that you’ll want to do is to split the mushroom in half from the top to the bottom. The rinse them off under running water as the crooks and crannies of the mushroom may contain sand or insects. After you’ve rinsed them thoroughly, you’ll want let them set in water for a short period of time in order to flush sand, debris or stubborn insects out of them.

You don’t want to soak in water for too long as they’ll soak up the water and become spongy.

Then the best part of morel hunting begins, preparing and eating them.

There are numerous ways to prepare morels including, fried and in mushroom soup. One of my favorite ways to prepare the morels is to fry them up in some type of batter.

An excellent batter can be made by combining equal parts beaten eggs with milk and crushed up saltine crackers.

After rinsing them, let the mushroom drip off on a dry towel and then dip in the mixture made from the beaten eggs and milk, coating them thoroughly.

Place the coated morel into a pan and cook in butter until crisp. Don’t over cook them, as they will dry out.

Morels are best when prepared fresh, but if you have a good mushroom hunting season and would like to preserve or save some of them for future use, mushrooms can be dried, frozen or blanched.

I’ve found that by dehydrating them, I can keep them for an extended period of time and when I’m ready to fry them up, all I need to do is to soak them in water for a short period of time and they’re ready for the pan.

Morel hunting is excellent ways to get outside and to not only enjoy the outdoors but to also enjoy the bounties that Mother Nature provides.

This spring while you’re out walking along the creek, river or hillsides look around as morels can be found throughout our area and you never know where they might appear.

They’re excellent eating and a great way to start out the season!