I had 2 great days, hope to have another tomorrow. 112 yesterday followed by 210 today. Both solo hunts, both were personal bests.

Those sure look good. No Idea if they even grow here.

Couple nice hauls! We're so popcorn fart dry I haven't even looked yet

wow how do you keep them, ?

Nice haul. Too early yet in my area.

Some dehydrate them , others freeze them.
Might look into canning them.
I left a few in my refrigerator years ago , Frost free one , and when I remembered them , they were rock hard .
Been using the frost free refrigerator for a dehydrator for them since.
I never find large amounts like some do.

Will they come back the next year in the same place if you pick them?

I found another 124 after posting this, after the rain stopped. So 334 total today wich is an overall personal best

My best previous day was 315 split between 3 people 6 years ago.

As for the question of them coming back to the same spot year after year, I don't believe so. There was a dead cedar tree that 6 years ago on the 315 hunt, that I found about 30 around. That cedar is at the spot where I walk into the woods every single time I go in, and I have never found a single one there since that day 6 years ago.

If you cook them like I do, dredged in egg then cracker crumbs and fried in butter,,, and you want to save them for the future, just bread them like mentioned and start them cooking, barely even get any color on them just enough to set the egg. Lay them on a sheet pan in the freezer in one layer. When they are frozen in an hour or two, put them in a good air tight container in the freezer (think tupperware). When ever you want them, (for me its mid winter) get them out add some butter to your skillet and cook them the rest of the way, right from frozen. I honestly couldn't tell them from fresh.

I never counted how many there were just went by the pound. I picked 301 pounds on my best year. Sold almost all them,,, after I ate my fill. I should of frozen a couple batches.

Morels are a fungi, they live on dead plant matter. Usually tree roots. They will feed off this dead tree till the food is gone then they will be gone unless there is another very close by that they can use.
They will not be in the same area year after year after year unless there is an abundance of food (dead trees).

Picking the mushroom does not hurt them. It just eliminates the ability to reproduce using the spores that the mushroom spreads.
They will continue to come back until the food is exhausted. 2 years, 4 years, 5 years? nobody can say for sure.

Weather makes a difference too, very dry weather is bad.

We usually don't pick the ones in our woods if they are small or there is not an abundance of them. If we can't get several dozen we leave them.
In the last couple years we have had an explosion of morels. We had a tornado go thru that knocked over lots of trees, I have been cutting and killing lots of trees to thin the woods.
Its taken about 3-4 years since this began to see the results in an abundance of morels.

We are going to dry the ones we get this year to add in soups, stews and casseroles. Both my wife and I really don't care for morels by themselves.

No Morels around here for another month at best.

Good to know. Thanks for the explanation. I have quite a few dead elms in my woods and it should be a wet spring. I'm new to this.

This is not entirely accurate.
Morels don't actually eat dead wood. While they take up some substances from litter and soil, they rely on their symbiont host plants for most of their calories (sugars that plants photosynthesize). They may live as mycelium in the soil and on tree roots for many decades and produce few actual fruitbodies, or even none, but they are still there.

Elms in North America are one of the key hosts of morels, and massive die-offs of elms due to the Dutch elm disease are connected with bumper crops of morels, just when the bark begins to peel off. Basically, they feel that their host is about to die and try to leave as much offspring as possible, as an emergency measure, by producing LOTS of fruitbodies and spores. They may fruit for a couple more years after that, but then the mycelium runs out of energy and becomes dormant, or dies.

The same happens with burn site morels. They "evacuate" when their hosts are killed by forest fires, and then may disappear for a couple of centuries until the forest regenerates and burns again. This is also why morels fruit along freshly built roads, near constructions sites, etc. - it's because their host trees are in distress.

Here, black morels are associated with lots of different trees, but seem to prefer trees of the Rose family (bird cherry, mountain ash, apples, etc.) and dogwood shrubs. Yellow morels here are rare and like five-needle pines, and burn-site morels like two-needle pines.


some of our morels from the previous years...







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I also burn my woods at least annually if possible. Weather and just the amount (20 acres) sometimes means it all doesn't get burned.
I have heard that burning encourages morels. Forest fires are really not like you see on the news around here at least. Here fire in the woods is a slow creeping thing usually about 6" tall or so.
Not nearly enough heat to kill most things.

Depending upon the type of trees and size fire will either out right kill them or does nothing or somewhere in between.

Don't have many elm, lots of dying/dead ash and lots of dead popple and more to kill this summer.. I cut lots of maples and ironwood.

Very interesting.

I remember finding a moral once it had to have Ben bigger than my hands.

OOOOOOOOOOH!!!!!!! OH! OH! OH!!!!!! I'll melt some butter!!!

Too early here in Pa., but Wife & I enjoy Morels.

Venison backstraps & Morels-

I found another 128 today bringing a 3 day total to 574. Last night I ate about 30 sauteed in butter. Threw up about 1.5 hours later. I have been known to get queasy when I eat too many sauteed buttered morels, my mom is the same way. But if I eat them fried, I'm fine no matter how many.

I know the difference in true morels, half-free morels, false morels, and pecker heads. I understand some people are able to eat the non true ones and be fine, while they make some people sick. I used to pick the pecker heads and eat them and was always fine. Nowadays I don't bother to pick the half-frees or pecker heads, I only pick true morels.

Anyways, after getting sick, I have had my fill for this year. Out of the 574 I've found, I ate about 30 and gave the rest away today. I plan to still go out next week and look if my friend comes up from Tennessee, he's pretty jealous of my last 3 days. I just enjoy going out and looking.

Today while looking, I had my Boykin spaniel and German shorthaired with me. The GSP cornered a skunk, grabbed a hold of it and started shaking it and got sprayed in the face. I'm just glad my Boykin didn't get sprayed because he stays inside.