The Fungus Among Us

The Fungus Among Us

   Every spring from approximately 1965 to 1985 my brother and I went on our annual one day hunting trip with our father. Your typical gear such as shotguns, shells and dogs remained at home. We hunted with our bare hands. The only equipment we needed would be a plastic bag, good walking boots, a can of tick spray and a good pair of eyes.

  Our destination would be the Marais Cygnes Massacre site in eastern Linn county Kansas. I still remember the sign next to the ravine where we parked explaining how on May 19, 1858 thirty men from Missouri under the leadership of Charles Hamilton rode into the Trading Post along the Marais Cygnes River just a few miles west of the state line and captured eleven unarmed Kansas free-state men. The captives were lined up on one side of the ravine while the Missouri men stood on the other side. The order was given to fire. After the smoke cleared, five free-state men lay dead with their six comrades near death beside them. I thought about what happened there each time we quietly walked pass the historical spot to enter the surrounding John Brown hills. Locals from near by towns tell me these hills were named after the abolitionist John Brown who played a huge role in the pre civil war days.

   My brother flanked our father on one side while I maintained an equal distance on the other side of him as we made our way in to the woods. Keeping in site of each other we slowly worked our way up and down hills and across small valleys.

  I liked to take a few steps and stop so I could scan the ground in every direction. Yellow morels can be some what difficult to spot if there are a lot of leaves around them. We always concentrated on places like old wagon trails and barns or open areas in the dense timber.

   A couple of farm houses time had long ago turned to dust still had their ancient foundations jutting up out of the ground like prehistoric dinosaur bones. There always seem to be a few morels growing close to them.

       Giant Elm trees, especially dead ones are excellent places to concentrate on.  Tree stumps will some times have a few around them. We also like to look by any type of large tree that has been blown down by a storm or fallen due to old age.

   Occasionally, you will get lucky and find a mess of morels growing in unlikely places such as beautifully manicured lawns or maybe along a sidewalk in the middle of the city.       

    I once found over thirty growing in a small area next to a grave stone in a northeast cemetery. With our father now deceased and time at a minimum in an increasingly busy world, we usually skip the long drive to Linn county, Kansas and hunt mushrooms on

Cliff Drive

. It’s an excellent place to fill a sack with the nutty tasting delicacies if you’re willing to work at it. Northeast resident and long time hunter, Tony Digerolmno has searched the woods along the cliffs for 12 years with a fair amount of success. The 53 year old normally only finds small ones but once in a while he’ll come across a batch of morels as big as soda pop cans.  

It’s always a good idea to cut the morel at the base instead of pulling it out by the roots.  We also leave a few so they will hopefully reproduce for the next spring hunt. If you spot one be sure and take your time looking all around it. There are usually others close by.

    Warm nights and plenty of rain form the perfect recipe for growing mushrooms. They can literally pop up over night. I like to look early in the morning. A perfect spring day to me is finding a bag full of morels in the morning and catching a stringer full of crappie in the afternoon.  Soak the mushrooms in salt water over night to get rid of bugs. Cut them length wise. Roll the morels and crappie in an egg batter, sprinkle crushed crackers all over both sides and fry in butter until a golden brown and you’ll have a meal fit for a king.

    Mushroom hunters and fishermen have a couple of things in common. Under no condition will they ever tell anyone where their best spots are at and they will some times stretch the truth ever so slightly when bragging about how many fish they caught or how many morels they found.

    Case in point; my co-worker of 20 years and good friend, Dan Daugherty insists that he once had a mushroom dog that could find and point morels as easily as a German Shorthaired Pointer locking down on a cubby of quail. If true, this wondrous animal would be the most incredibly valuable canine in the country. Since no one has actually seen this dog, could it be one of those “Fishing Stories”?

You be the judge. Dan’s favorite quote is, “I’ll never lie to you but I won’t let the truth stand in the way of a good story”.

Happy hunting!