Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 10, 1993 TAG: 9305100308
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Few are invited to the annual parade of fungi marching on the forest floor, with dogwoods and redbuds waving overhead like flags amid the pastel greens of spring. Some things in the great outdoors you simply don't share.
So members of the mycological society catalog excuses like anglers stuff vest pockets with flies.
"They aren't up, yet. It's too early. Too cold. We need a good rain and warmth to bring them on. You should have gone two weeks ago. It's gotten too hot. Too late now. We'll do it next year, for sure."
Most of these statements probably are truthful, because mushrooms pop up through the forest duff according to their own, indifferent agenda. They do not have wings, paws or fins, yet they can be fleeting like deer, elusive like trout, secretive like grouse.
Gathering them is no blood sport, but their pursuit is better described as stalking rather than collecting. First you have to find them.
Dorsey Huff, a collector for 17 years, recalls the time . . . well, let's let him tell the story.
"One time I found a bunch when I was going to a turkey gobbler. I stopped to pick the mushrooms and the gobbler walked up over the bank and putted at me and was gone."
Now Huff, who lives in Roanoke, tends to concentrate on the meat before the trimmings.
Mushroom gathering fits nicely with gobbler hunting, trout fishing and wild-flower walks because all are gifts of nature that add magic to the spring woods. All live in the the world's most pleasant places and become active at a most beautiful time of the year. All should be treated like a scarce, precious commodity - because they are.
For Richard Pauley, mushrooms and gobblers have a certain mystical intertwining that goes beyond the natural.
"They are both very unimpressed with who you are and what your are," he said. "You have to do it on their terms, and everything has to be just right."
It was that way several years ago when Pauley, who lives in Daleville, came across a patch of mushrooms of such rich abundance that he had to make a pack out of his camo garb to carry them.
"I took my camouflage pants off, tied the legs off and put my turkey rope in the belt loops," he said. "I found 26 pounds."
There have been no such discoveries this year; instead, mushrooms have been collected in handfuls taken here and there. Blame it on the weather.
"It has been terrible," Pauley said. "We have only found 270 - 280. That is 1,000 behind last year."
When you press a collector for information, you are likely to be told that morels grow where you find them. That can be in a grove of poplar trees, old apple orchards, pine thickets, second-growth hardwoods.
Last week, my wife and I located them around a huge, fallen red oak, an area where an uncle, now in his 80s, has gathered them for years. He calls them "honeycombs," and you have only to look at one closely to see why.
Most mushroom collectors get started under the guidance of a guru, someone who knows the secrets of this fruit of the forest. Someone who still is alive to share such secrets.
That's because the mysterious aspects of stalking mushrooms don't just center on the difficulty of locating your prey. There's also the good, healthy fear that a mushroom can symbolize a tombstone for those who happen to pick a poisonous one.
They are the culinary equivalent to handling snakes: great fun, unless you fool with the wrong one. If it is any comfort, the morel probably is the safest of the wild fungi.
"People tell me they taste like oysters," said Huff. "I guess that's where they got the name `wood fish.' "
Huff's wife, Wanda, who is both a morel collector and cook, likes to fry them in a black, iron skillet, much as you would chicken. In fact, occasionally you'll hear them called "hickory chicken."
At the Pauley home, where there are six in the family, "people eat them up faster than the fryer can fry them," Richard said. "Usually if you are not near the front of the line for supper, you don't get any mushrooms."
Morels are elusive to the very end.
by CNB