00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and today we are switching things up and the interest of arming you all to engage in local, social, distance friendly activities and affordable means of acquiring food. We're delivering to you today the ultimate deer hunter's guide to that tastiest of springtime endeavors, mushroom hunting. All right, welcome to the Wired Dunt Podcast, brought to you by on X. I'm I'm excited about this one today because back with us on the podcast. He He's disappeared for a couple of months now, but we are back with the hot tub hunter, the baritone bomber Spencer new Hearth. I'm glad you're back on the show. Spencer. How are you doing? What's up? Mark? I'm doing good. Um, just in the same boat as everyone else with the quarantine thing. So how how are you coping? Uh? You know it's not too bad. Um. We have these zoom calls like every day at work, and every day I'm more grateful that I'm not dealing with like regrets at the house. So the quarantine thing isn't awful. I'd love to be like traveling out of state and hunting, um, but it's just like more important matters. So I'm okay putting this side for a spring. Yeah, I feel like you're leaving. You're living a very different quarantine life than a lot of us, because it is Yeah, like you just said, me and Ben and a lot of the guys in the Meteor team, we're just just trying to keep our heads above water, chasing kids around and trying to still get work done and all that. And when I go on Instagram and I look at what Spencer's doing, He's playing like four Game night with his wife. Like you're going off doing all these crazy things, not going places, but it looks like you're living this wonderful life still, um, and I don't like it. I don't like seeing your happiness, Spencer. It's killing uh good. Well, I hope I make you jealous again a small with like some giant bucks or something. Yeah, I imagine you will. Um. So So, Spencer, the reason why other than just catching up, the reason why I wanted to get you on for this one is kind of this whole quarantine thing that's been going on. It's got me thinking about different things I can be doing locally since I can't travel lot of stay right now, there's a lot of people in the same boat. They're stuck at home. Um, hopefully they can do some turkey hunting, hopefully, some deer scouting, hopeless, some stuff like that. But we're a little more limited than usual. And one of the things that I personally was thinking, you know what this year I'm finally gonna get serious about it is mushroom mounting. And you have been harpened on me about this for a while, and I know you're still passionate about mushrooms that you would be the guy that talk to It seems like, given the lockdown, given the fact that you know, grocery store runs are an endeavor right now, that anyway you can get more wild food from the outdoors safely, socially distance from people, that's that's a good thing, and mushroom hunting seems to provide that. So what I thought we could do is get a deer hunter's guide to mushroom hunting. So right, everyone listening as a deer hunter, so we all have that same shared context, and you are a deer hunter, so you've got that shared context, but you're also this mushroom nut. I figured you could be the guy that's best suited to train people that know how to deer hunt how to translate that into mushroom hunting skills. So number one, do you feel like you're up to the task? And then number two, why the hell should we care about mushroom hunting? Did my did my reasons ring the bell? Or is there something else to it? There is more to it? But I think I am of the task. Yes, I love mushrooms. Um, I would. I would confidently say that in the last decade I've picked up more pounds of mushrooms than they have more pounds of shed alers. I know that for a fact. It might just because you're Spencer, but it's it's it's multiple things going on in there. It's that I'm not very good at shed hunting, uh, And I do love mushrooms. So I think I went to the task, and I think your audience should care about it because as deer hunters and assumed turkey hunters, they're already familiar with areas that are going to contain a lot of morale mushrooms. Um. And then as we'll talk about a little bit later, one of the things that makes morales so valuable is their inability to be farmed. UM. So, as we you know, like talk about how this is an amazing time to be outdoors people and have all this wild food in our freezer, this is like a whole another level of that. You are going to go to a grocery store and buy morale mushrooms because they don't exist in the same context that like packaged meat or packaged vegetables do. Morales can't be formed like a lot of other um, mushrooms can be. So there's a value in that that it's like really really hard to measure, and it's one thing that makes these mushrooms so special. Yeah. I from the little bit of mushroom hunting of done and a little bit of eating of them, I think the last thing that surpriably noted is just how delicious they are too. Not only are they rare, but they taste really, really really good. UM. So that's certainly something to keep in mind for all this as well. But I gotta I gotta bring up one past story because I think people listening you know, they've heard you on rough Fresh Radio, they've heard you on regular episodes of Wired Hunt, they've heard you just out the fact that you've picked up more mushrooms and sheds. But they still might be wondering about your mushroom credentials. Honestly, I might. If I was listening right now, I might still be sitting here and saying, you know, I've seen pictures of this guy, I've heard him. I just don't know if he's a mushroom man. So I just want to lay out one anecdote for you. We were we were in Montana. I was in Montana this past December. I think it was December early January, I can't remember which, but we were at a bar. It's really Christmas party, so it's so like mid December, Okay, yeah, yeah. So we're at a bar in Montana, kind of a dievy bar that Ryan Callahan recommended, and we're sitting in the back corner all the table, and I noticed that Spencer wasn't with the group. Everybody else was in the group talking and Spencer, you were gone, And of course I'm concerned about your well being, so I start looking around, Where is he? Where is he is he okay? Did he get lost? Um? Common things you've got to worry about with a character like you. And I look up towards the bar itself and there you are sidled up next to another guy, and you're very close, speaking very excitedly to each other. I didn't know what to think. I wasn't gonna pass any judgment. I had no idea what was going on over there. But I could tell that you were really into something. And so later that evening I asked you what you guys were doing, and you informed me that you had just joined the Rocky Mountain Mushroom Club. I think is what it was? Is that true? Can you confirm or deny this? It is the Southwest Montana Micological Association. E've ben better and what what does that mean? Well, um, mid December is a really awful time to join a foraging club because there's not really anything to do when there's like a foot of snow on the ground. So thus far I haven't done anything. But at this point, it's just like a regular newsletter that goes out to like the one fifty something members of the Southwest Montegana Micological Association. I'm speechless. And I'm impressed that that. I think that warrants or that showcases your dedication to this pursuit if nothing else does. The fact that you're part of a club, you get a consistent newsletter and you use the word micaological mycaological. Wow. All right, So there you have a spencer. Is the reality of when it custom mushrooms? Uh so I can add more to that. So it wasn't It wasn't just by chance that like I was like, oh, this guy looks like a mushroom water now. He he had his laptop up at the bar. Like Bozeman is a college town, this was very clearly a college student, and the background on his computer was a fly Garrick mushroom, which is like this very niche mushroom that unless you're like really into my college, you wouldn't like recognize it's important. And so I was like, hey, uh, like, what's to deal with the uh flag Eric's And then he started telling me that he was doing part of his dissertation on it. He was a grad student uh in Bozeman here, and he was a member of the mushroom club. And that's how I got in. And then we spent like a half hour talking mushroom hunting. And you know, I'm like, I'm a happily married guy. So that was like my version of picking up a woman at the bar was finding someone to talk mushroom hunting with. Yeah, man, you you uh had a hell of a one night stand as far as mushroom talking. Um, you said that he didn't look like a mushroom guy. You saw the background. But if you had to try to describe what a mushroom guy looks like, could you, Oh, well, I I didn't. What I meant by that was that, like, you don't look at somebody and recognize necessarily at their mushroom guy. But I do like if if you had to, though, if I forced to try to sketch out what your stereotypical mushroom guy would be, that's what I want to hear. Um. You know, like Ryan Callahan is a pretty good example. You mentioned his name, and that's a good one. Like somebody who has facial hair of some sort. Certainly if you're a male, that's a requirement. And then like fairly dirty clothes when you're out in public places. That's that seems like something else that um, mushroom hunters have UM besides that, I don't I don't really know, probably drive some sort of vehicle that's not like real high end UM. I come across all kinds of mushroom hunters that are like driving these old station wagons or these um little s tens, really real beat up pickups things like that, so that that would be like a stereotypical mushohunter. I think is there a little bit of like a counterculture vibe within, like the hardcore mushroom people like people like to be like people take pride in the fact that they kind of fly under the radar, they do something that's just a little bit off the main road that thing. Yeah, yeah, I think I think there's definitely like in off the grid thing to mushroom hunting. It It feels like another level of kind of UM self sustaining is going out in the wild and discerning like what is an edible mushroom? What is a magical mushroom in which one might kill you? I think there's like a whole another level to that UM beyond like killing a deer and taking it to a butcher and then having these steaks in your freeze, right, I think that's certainly part of it. Yeah, yeah, okay, So I feel like I've got a good foundation now to get serious about this UM. Alright, So you mentioned something that has always been on my mind when I looked at possible lingering concerns about getting in a mushroom hunt. Is this idea that I could kill myself if I accidentally ate the wrong mushroom? How likely is that? Is that like a real thing we need to be worried about UM or with a little bit of basic information, can we safely do this? Like, help me understand that preliminary. One of the great things about morales is that they are part of what's called the fool proof for. There are these four mushrooms that are very common. They have a wide distribution across North America. UM. They are choice edibles, meaning they taste great, they are easy to work within the kitchen. And then on top of it, which is maybe the most important thing of being one of the fool proof for is that there's hardly anything like it that can be UM confused for what that mushroom is and make you sick or kill you or poisoning or anything like that. And so a morale is part of that fool proof for now. There is this thing out there called the false morale, which is largely like an incorrect term um and a very loose term um. A false morale mushroom to one person might be a totally different mushroom to another person, and a totally different mushroom to another person. A false morale refers to this other type of mushroom that is like not even very closely related at all and doesn't look all that similar to a true morale. UM. And there's a handful of these mushrooms that are categorized as false morales. Most of them are edible and taste fine, but there is one that is highly toxic um and it can kill you. I think the University Alaska has done some research and it said that it produces this chemical that's like similar to what's in rocket fuel and it basically causes your organs to shut down and diarrhea and lightheaded is and things like that. But as I said, UM, just a very little amount of um mycology knowledge and you'll be totally fine. It's it's like if one of your listeners were to look at a white tail next to an antelope, you'd be like, well, these are very clearly different things. Um. Sure, they all have board legs and hoofs and they've got these things coming out of their head. But that's like basically where their similarities end. And so if you look up a little bit what a false morale looks like. Obviously this is impossible to describe um over the podcast, they grow a little bit sooner than true morales. UM. Typically, a true morale is going to be like yellow or gray, um. A false morale is going to be like purple or um more maroon or brown. And a false morale it has that kind of brainy cap like a true morale has, but it also looks like somebody stepped up, stepped on it, and it was left outside in the sun and rain um for a while. So if you just get a little bit of information on what those look like, it's going to be as quick to you as looking at an analok next to a white tail to recognize that these are different things. Yeah, that's a good analogy, and you've got there's an article on the Mediator website which shows an image of the two next to each other. Right, Yes, there is um, and that shows one of the species of the false morale. As I said, there are a handful of mushrooms referred to as false for false morales. UM. Many of them are just fine to eat, But as a beginning mushroom hunter, I would just cross them all off your list, don't mess with them at all, just in case you were to get the one that is the wrong one. YEA. If if I wanted to just be super duper safe about my mushroom hunting the spring, and I was going to pick up a mushroom identification book, is there one you'd recommend or one that you have that's good for pre in anything like that. So I have a handful of um mushroom hunting books, and I think that's right. I think it depends on what level of involvement you plan for. So if you are somebody who lives in Illinois and you want a mushroom hunt there, but you also plan on taking a spring turkey trip down to Louisiana and you plan on taking a white tailed trip out to Nebraska or something like that, then I would get a broader one, UM the Peterson Field Guide, which has that like very recognizable cover of having some pictures of illustrated mushrooms and then it's like green and yellow. That that's a very common field guide for anything, whether it's it's birds or trees or mushrooms. So that's a great one, UM if you plan on like getting serious about this in hunting in multiple places. But if you are that person that lives in Illinois, UM, there's a lot of really good regional guides for wherever you live. UM. And with those regional guides there's often more specific information, better information for your area. And so I would recommend one of those. Okay, you mentioned this, UM, this fool proof for so morales are one of those. But what are what are some of the other mushrooms that we should be thinking about that we might be able to pick up the spring um? And maybe there's more than just those three additional but I guess what are the common ones that if I was starting out, I should have on my radar. So Morales is one of them, UM, and we'll talk more about those later. Chicken of the Woods or another one. UM. I would rank them as the top five tasting mushroom. They taste great. They have this super distinct coloration. It's is very vibrant orange and yellow, and it's one of the things that makes them so easy to identify. And a really cool thing about chicken of the woods is that they grow in war miss patches. So if you go out morale hunting, there's a good chance you're only gonna come home with like as much that will fit in your pockets, and that's it. Just have enough for like a saw tepe pan. Chicken in the woods, on the other hand, will grow in these enormous patches where it's nothing to go find. Um a statue of chicken in the woods. It's like ten pounds and more so, they are bright orange and yellow. Some people call them sulfur mushrooms. Um. Some people call them rooster of the woods, but they have that name because of their very bright colors that are similar to a rooster. And then they also have that name because the way they function in the kitchen is similar to that of chicken. So vegans are very big fans of chicken in the woods because they're a great substitute for whatever you would normally do with chicken. You can toss them in a pasta or eat them as they are, like like slice them into these big honks. Um. There's a lot of things you can do with the chicken of the woods. That's that's two of them. Um. A giant puff ball is the third of the fool proof for now. These are super recognizable mushrooms UM. And they range from the size of like a baseball, which is pretty common. Um. I've seen some as big as softballs. But there are these legendary puff balls that get up to the size of volleyballs or even basketballs. UM. And basically it is um exactly like what I just described. It is this volleyball that is sitting on the ground with like no stem. If if you cut one of these puff balls open, it is pure flesh throughout the entire thing. And so it is this very dense mushroom. UM. And those those grow across the country. You'll see them in the spring, but I've also found them in the summer. They kind of grow in these more meadowy areas like around I don't know, ankle high grass, and a lot of people refer to them as the breakfast mushroom because is they are great to use in omelets, uh, just with eggs on toast things like that. So the giant puff ball would be the third of the four, and then the last one is a shan trail. Um. Chantrails grow typically a little bit later in the year. They're one that can grow though, like from spring all the way through fall. UM usually at higher elevations in more molinous areas, and shan trails are very obvious and like a chicken in the woods. They also grow in these enormous patches. UM. My first time like experience in shan trails was this last year in Montana and I came across this whole entire hillside that was orange um. I could have left with fifty pounds of shan trail as if I wanted. And they don't have anything that looks really like them. There is this thing like jack laner and mushroom um that is very toxic. But again it's like comparing a white tail to an antelope. They're not that similar. And Chantrell's tastes great um similar to morales. They have like this earthy, nutty flavor that is awesome in the kitchen. I feel like ninety of the time when I hear about mushroom hunting, it's people talking about morrel's. Is that because Morel's are the most prevalent. Is it because the mushrooms you're gonna find out there morals. So they're just so popular because of that or is it just because people because they're easier to find, or is it because they just taste so good? Like? Why is it that morales seem to be the thing when someone says mushroom hunting, Oh, they're gonna go find morrel's why why is that? I would say that um, similar to like what makes a walleye so good is that they have this firm flesh that is super easy to work with. You can do anything with them in the kitchen, And so if I wanted to, I would sound like Bubba Gump them the Forest Goat movie, where he's like, you could put them on toast, you can put him on a burger, you could put them with eggs, you could throw them in aposta. There's just like an unlimited amount of things you can do with morales. Um. And and then there's also this perceived value. Whether or not you choose to cash in on that value, UM, it still means that, like it makes it extra special when you're eating this thing that in some years it's worth fifty dollars a pound. UM. So that's that's certainly part of it even if you never sell a morale in your life. It's just like this cool thing to eat. Uh, Like what would ordinarily be part of this Michelin Restaurants five star meal. Yeah? Interesting, Okay, Um, I feel like is it is it? Is it fair to say if I'm gonna pick up much from hunting for the first time, and I don't wanna, you know, over stry my skill set and I'm just gonna I want to focus on just one kind of mushroom morrel's would is the fairest that morales would be like the beginner's starting point, Like start there. Morales are a good place to start because they are one of the fool proof for they taste so good. Um. They grow during a time of year like for your audience where they're likely already in the woods. Um, whether that's turkey hunting or shed hunting or doing some like early spring scouting whatever that is, you're already on the woods anyway, so you're not really sacrificing, um, like you're not interrupting white tail hunting for example, to go look for morales. And so I think that makes them a big plus as well. Where it gets difficult for a beginner is that mushroom hunters are as tight lipped as anybody in the outdoor community. I've said this before, but like I've had people offer up their best turkey hunting spots or exactly where to go catch a limit of walleyes in the spring, but most mushroom hunters take their best spots to their grave. And so for that reason, you basically have to set out and discover your own barrell mushroom hunting areas, which which is tough. That that's that's certainly a barrier four beginners, But hopefully a podcast like this in articles that we have on the mediator dot com things like that can like shorten that learning curve and make you confident when you go onto the woods that you are going to find some Yeah, it's funny you mentioned this secret spot thing. I've got a good friend who whose dad is a farmer. He owns a lot of land, and he gives us all permission to go out there in turkey hunt all spring, and he's like, go at it, shoot you know, go ahead and shoot turkeys. Doesn't care about that at all. But if you even touch a morale, you're in deep trouble. So let's your deer hunt, turkey hunt, whatever, but don't you dare get into his mushroom spots. Yeah, so yeah, that definitely seems to be true. It's that kind of a community. Yeah, I get it. They're they're delicious. Um. So what's the timeframe, what's like that window of time that we can be thinking about this. I think we're smacked out in the middle of it, right. Yeah, this this is um maybe peak mushroom hunting in the country. For the South, um, mushroom hunting is just kind of wrapping up. But for the Midwest, they're in it right now. And then for like the North, um, they're going to be starting out here probably within a few weeks. So what does that uh from what march so in like when those mushrooms pop up, it's not super well understood. And this is something that we should say on the front end of this podcast that as much as it may appear that I know about mushrooms, or other people know about mushrooms or like the available literature, mushrooms are truly an enigma. Specifically morales. Morales are an enigma, UM. And part of what speaks to that is our inability to cultivate them. There was this grad student in two who he cracked the code on morale mushrooms. He was at San Francisco State University. I believe it was. Um he was like the first person to artificially or to harvest artificially grown morale mushrooms. And this would like absolutely change the mushroom industry. But three months before his patent was granted, he was murdered. Um. Yeah, and this is like, this is like part of the wildness of morale mushroom hunting lower anyway, do you have a desire to someday write a book, Spencer, because if they do, there's your book right there, man. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Despite Ronaldo or like leaving behind this public patent that anybody can go see right now. Um, he very clearly left some things out as most patents due to like kind of guard his secrets. Um. And he also had this super lucrative contract with Domino's Pizza that went with him to the grave. And nobody since then has been able to replicate morale mushrooms. And so I just want to like put all that on the front end. Our world's greatest minds have worked on this and they can't solve it. There's just so many mysteries around morale mushrooms, and so there's not a ton of this that is like super firm. It leaves a lot of areas for foragers to kind of fill in the gaps. UM. And that's where like different than maybe white tail hunting. Um. I think white tail hunters are as smart as they have ever been at any period of time because of like how small the learning curve he's got with podcasts like this and things like the q d m A that that distribute all this great scientific literature. UM. Mushroom hunting. On the other hand, with morales, there is loads of value in listening to those old timers and figuring out like where they like to look for mushrooms and when they like to look for mushrooms, because that might truly be the best information we have available. So I want to put all that on the front end before we get into some of these things, which like this is when they grow, this is where they grow, this is how to find them, things like that. It's fascinating hearing you talk about this stuff. Um, I'm really stuck on this guy's story. I want to learn more about the dominoes murders of the much man. I would love for there to be something more. They're like, some competitor hired these people, but it came down it was a botched mugging in this park in the middle of the night by these teenagers. Um, and that's just kind of where it's been left at. So they say, right, so what are what are the what are the old timer tails? You know, like within the deer hunting world, you know, folks like to say that certain moon phases impact dear movements, certain such and such like. We always like to debate these things, the various factors that might influence dear. Um, what are some of those myths or beliefs are you know, old sayings when it comes to mushrooms. So if you want to simplify all this, you could look at soil temperature and even this is like an enormous window for when morales grow. Um, if you look online, you're gonna find numbers that range from forty five degrees up to like sixty three degrees when morales will be growing. If I had to pick a window when mushroom hunting is best, I would say in that mid to high fifties, So fifty six fifty seven around there. When you're soil temperature in that first four inches reaches about that temperature, morales are going to be popping up. But for that old timer wisdom that we reference, there are these awesome folksy sayings that are are made to help you figure out when to hit the woods. And I've gathered a whole bunch of these over the years through forums and through you know, talking to people firsthand, and and interviewing folks from morale mushroom hunting articles. And I'll go through the list here in the Great Plains where I grew up. The most common one is that about five to ten days after the dandelions get their yellow is when you should be morale mushroom hunting. So if you live somewhere from North Dakota down to Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, places like that, when the dandelions starts showing up in New Yard, uh, five to ten days after that, that's when the mushroom hunting is great. In New England, I've heard it said that when the blood route starts to flower. Now, I don't even know what a blood looks like or what that is, but the best one that I've heard repeated many times in New England and the East. Another one of the East is when the peak turkey strut has happened. That's also when peak morale time is um, which kind of makes sense, Like I could I could say that also works for the Great Plains, but what really is the peak turkey stripe? You know that that's like a hard thing to nail down. In the Midwest, um, when oak tree buds are the size of mouse ears. So uh, if you want to imagine what a mouse ear looks like, which is basically nothing. But once those buds start to show, that's when it's time to look for moraws. In the South, and this is a very common one, maybe, like one of the most common ones is that when the dogwood trees reach the size of a squirrel's ear. Again, very similar to like the oak trees and mouse ears, same thing. Once those buds start to show on the dogwood trees, its tund to look for morales. In the Great Lakes area, these are maybe a little bit more specific. When jack and the pulpits start to open, or when may apples put on their umbrellas. Are those things that sound familiar to you? Mark I've got no idea what a jack pulpit is. Jack, Jack in the pulpit, Jack in the pulpit. Okay, Yeah, i'mna have to look that one up. Okay. So that's that's like, uh for for the great legs folks in the West. Um, when the when the oysters start popping, So in oyster mushroom is this other very obvious mushroom that uh, it's not one of the food proof for but it could be. Um, it's this large mushroom that grows on the side of dead trees near waterways. When you see those, then it's time to look from morales in the Pacific North in the Pacific Northwest when the wild flowers start to open, and then on the West coast when the daffodils start to bloom. So there are all kinds like like dozens of these folksy sayings for when it's time to look for morales, um, all of which I think are really cool. I read in one of your articles about this um about the shortness sometimes of the window that you have. You know, it comes to like a turkey hunting season, let's say here in Michigan openings April eighteenth, then it runs through the end of May, so I've got like six weeks to chase turkeys. Um. And it sounds like there's these varying windows for morals. They could be popping in March, they could be popping in June, depending on where you are in the country. But like, how long does that window last in any given area? Like, am I looking here in Michigan? I'm anecdotally. I feel like I've seen or heard people talk about finding mushrooms as early as like now, middle of April ish all the way through May. Um? Is that is am I? Am I right in that recollection? Or is it usually a shorter window, because I feel like I read somewhere that you said sometimes it might be ten days and then they're gone or something like that. So the window that you have from mushroom hunting is totally depends ending on weather. Ideal temperatures for morale mushrooms are like wind nighttime lows during the fifties and daytime highs are in the seventies. That is the perfect mushroom growing weather. Um. And for a lot of the Midwest, um, like right now is when they start to show up further north. The end of April there are kind of like these windows where it's guaranteed to happen, Like in Michigan, Mark you're never gonna have morales showing up in March probably that that's like not gonna happen, and the same thing in the South and the South they're not gonna be picking morales in June, but they might be in Montana. So there are these like very vague windows. But the whole thing is dependent on weather, and so there might be some years where the mushroom season so to speak, uh last for just a week because you get like these great temperatures where the mushrooms pop up. And once they once they do pop up. Despite morales appearing to have like this firm flesh, they are super delicate when it comes comes to the temperature. So if you have morales that are visible and the daytime highs are in the seventies and nighttime lowers are in the fifties, and then you see in the forecast there's like three street three straight days of high eighties with no precipitation at all, or if there's an enormous cold snap that's going to show up where it's like thirty degrees, that is your mushroom hunting deadline. UM, they might still be visible, like into that window where it's very cold or very hot and very dry, but their quality is going to disappear. They're not going to be like choice edibles any longer. So some years, if you have this perfect uh temperatures and you get precipitation, um like mild temperatures and rain, that's exactly what you want for a good mush from season. If you have that, it could last like three weeks. Or if you live in a state, um like Idaho where you have these river bottoms where you can go and find moraus and kind of these textbook areas, but then you also have these high elevations where they grow that might be spread out over the course of like a month and a half. Granted, those mushrooms are being found in very very different areas. But if you're in someplace in the Midwest and you have this white tail property, normally that mushroom hunting season isn't gonna last for more than a few weeks UM, but it's almost always at least like five days long. Do you do you We're not trying to say do they regrow? Like if I were to go in and I find a patch and I pick them. Could I come back two weeks later and there will be more there if you get the right weather. Um, you'll you sometimes have like these secondary girls, um, but largely it is that the mushrooms are showing up in some other area. Now, if if you find this patch around a dead tree where there's like twenty morales, and you pick them all, and then you come back in a few weeks, there's probably going to be a few left that you just missed. Um. But if you have those perfect temperatures, the mushrooms are going to continue to grow. So yeah, you can come on like a Monday, grab a bunch of mushrooms, and then come back, you know, like two weekends later, and you'll find some more interesting. So let's talk about finding them. Um. When I first started shed hunting, I used to go out and just walk every square inch of the property I had access to, look at it all and hope to find something. But now after I've done that for a long time, I've learned to try to become more efficient with my shed hunting, and I'll spend most of my time shed hunting in a couple of smaller areas that I think there's high odds of their being anglers. So I more time and those best spots and a skip over or just gloss over all the other lower likelihood places. UM. I read you describe something similar for mushrooms, but I'm kind of curious to hear you explain this a little bit more how you actually approach you know, your process of searching for mushrooms. So as you've said with shed hunting, Um, you've written this on the metior dot com and shed hunting articles that like eighty percent of the sheds are found on twenty of the landscape. That that's an accurate quote, right, ye, yeah, and that also can apply to morale mushrooms. Um. Although it may seem totally random, and I just you know, laid out how we don't hardly know anything about mushrooms, it's not completely random. We can still somewhat predict like where they're going to be, and to understand that or to predict where these areas are, it's helpful to like get into the weeds a little bit and under stand how and why morale mushrooms. Girl, So morale's are the fruiting body from this mycelium that lives in trees. There's this my celium and it lives in treesum Uh. The simplest way to put that would be that it's like the roots of a mushroom, or it's the vegetative portion of a mushroom, and then the morale that you see and that you eat is its fruiting body. So maybe think of like the morale mushroom as an apple, and then like the mycelium is like the branch from that apple that you don't really care about, or you know, you don't really pay attention to. This mycelium lives in trees, and when a tree is healthy and happy, it will only put out the mycelium will only put out a handful of these fruiting bodies. But when there's a eve threat to the tree and the tree gets stressed out, that's when it puts a lot more effort into reproduction and it kicks out all kinds of these fruiting bodies. So the first thing you want to look for when you're looking for morales is it a wooded area. That's that's a must have. You're not gonna go out um into like the bad lands of Nebraska and find morale mushrooms or like the desert of Arizona, and find morale mushrooms that won't happen. You need trees. The next thing to pay attention to is if the landscape has been stressed out, And by stressed out, I mean an area that has experienced some kind of fire, whether that's a wildfire in the West or some like low intensity prescribed burn in the South, that stresses out those trees and helps them kick out mushrooms. Floods are maybe the best and the easiest one. You just have to, you know, search along waterways that experience flooding and you're gonna find morales. Um The year following two thousand and eleven, when every river in the country was swollen and swallowing up all this river bottoms and islands, two thousand twelve was like the best mushroom hunting year that I've ever had because it just stressed out all these areas uh and caused all these trees to produce the fruiting body that is a morale mushroom. So fires, floods, logging areas, those will kick out morales. Mining areas the same thing. If you have wind damage. If you may be hunting like a river bottom that experiences some flooding or swamp area. UM, and the roots system doesn't take really well. And then you have this huge wind event in the summer and it knocks over some trees or bends over some trees, but they're still alive. UM. That's a great time to go find morales is the spring after the wind damage to trees, because that tree will have been stressed out. And so with with this, when I talk about something being stressed out, UM, you want to go in mushroom hunt the spring after an event. So if if a property is burned in the summer, go look next spring. If a property floods in May, go look the next April. Um that that first growing season after traumatic event is going to be the best time to find the morales. And then each year after that you'll still find some morals, but not at the same level you did that first time. Have you ever heard of people proactively managing their properties are doing things to stress the environment to produce more mushrooms, Because a lot of things you just describe are things that deer hunters do on their properties to improve the habitat for deer, like a prescribed fire or I'm thinking like a selective cut or or hinge cutting. Right. Hinge cutting is you're cutting a tree partially but not killing it. So I wonder if you hinge cut a bunch of areas for your deer, if that also is gonna gonna become a mushroom hot spot? Is that is that possible? Yeah? Absolutely, um. But as far as people intentionally doing it, besides maybe those folks that are trying to um realize Ronald Ower's work after he was slain, I don't. I don't think anybody is out there like manipulating the landscape to grow more morales. Um. But with that said, like wildfires in the West are um obviously a lot more common. And that's like the worst kept mushroom hunting secret is that after a mountain range burns that you can go find all these morales because they're super easy to smot and it's like as predictable as a morale gets. But I don't want other people to think that those burns can't apply to them, because, like I said, there's all kinds of like low intensity burns that happen. Or farmers are constantly torching ditches to to get rid of the old plan matter. Um, if any of that happens, like near a waterway or near a wooded area, those spots are going to produce moral mushrooms. Okay, So like walk me through the the bullet list of hot spots to check. I think you've kind of described this, But okay, if i'm if I'm trying to recall, I'm gonna be hitting anything that's been burned, I'm gonna be hitting anything that's been flooded. I'm gonna hit anywhere where there's a lot of dead trees. Um, Are there any other of these hot spots that I should make sure I've got on my list that I'm checking off as I walk through my property or a piece of public land, any other quick like specific spots to look for. Yeah, And and I don't want to give the wrong impression that those are the only places to find arouse. Those are just the most obvious places to find arouse. Like I said, a healthy tree is always going to kick out morale mushrooms that has this my celium in it. Um. So you can go out to a cattle pasture that doesn't get wind damage or mining or log or anything like that, and you can find morale mushrooms there just now to the same quantity that you would with some of these other things. Copy that. As far as other things to look for, it's kind of a seasonal thing. And so at the beginning of the morale mushroom growing season, you want to look for um like more permeable soils like sandy or soils um south facing slopes, things like that, places that catch more sunlight, uh have less trees, those sorts of areas, those are going to grow the morales first. But as you have um like less permeable soils and more shaded areas, that's where the morales are going to grow next. And if you want to if you want to think of this like an island um because islands flood all the time that they're one of my favorite places to go look from arale mushers. If you want to think of this like an island. Early in the growing season, you're going to look around the perimeter of the island where the soil is sandy or where there's less trees. But as that season progresses, you're going to move into those dancery areas where it gets less sunlight and where that soil temperature doesn't rise quite as quickly. That's all I got on that parts are confusing. Oh that's awesome. Um okay, so what about the specific types of trees. One of the things that I've been told by my mushroom hunting buddies is to look for dead elm trees specifically. And I was told to look for a tree that is dead but it still has some of his bark on it, but it's in the process of starting to shut it's bark. That is like a specific thing I was told to do. And like they told me, just walk around the woods or farm fields and look for trees that look like that and then just go check eats tree. Um is that true? Are there any other specific trees like that or anything along those lines? To narrow down even further, Yeah, so we we kind of just covered the macro since like you want a wooded area and preferably a wooded area that's been stressed, that has quality soil, gets sunlight, um, and get some water. That's kind of like the macro view, but down to a micro since you're absolutely right on you want to search around trees um, trees that are in the process of dying or trees that have very recently died. They're going to kick out the most morale mushrooms. As far as tree identification goes, this is something that is widely debated. Um. Somebody on the East Coast might have an absolute favorite tree to find morales wise, but then somebody in the Midwest, UM might swear that morales don't exist around trees like that. I think maybe like the three trees that are agreed upon by all mushroom hunters in every region are elms, ashes, and apple trees. Those those three trees seem to be pretty agreed upon that they will grow morales. But then you have these other ones like tulip poplars, um yellow poplars, cotton woods, fir trees. Those are all sort of these regional things. And like one of the best mushroom hunters I know in the Northeast will say that tulip poplars don't grow morales. But then someone in the East who picks tons of mushrooms told me that they never find did I say this backwards? Someone in the Northeast said that they don't like finding them around tulip poplars, but then somebody in the East said that that's their favorite tree to pick morales around. So this is something that kind of goes to or the how to find more morale mushrooms is that when you do stumble upon a morale mushroom, stop and like visually taken as much as you possibly can, Like, is the soil here wet or dry? Are there other mushrooms growing around it? Is the tree dead? What kind of tree is it? What other vegetation is here? Is this spot getting a lot of sunlight? Just like deer hunting, morale mushroom hunting favors those that are detail oriented, um and are prepared to look in the correct areas. So take note of all those things. Um. Somebody who finds a crapload of morale mushrooms in Illinois around elm trees might not like have the same success if they went over to Oklahoma and looked around elm trees there, it might be apple trees in that area. So it's just very regional and it comes down to like paying attention to what trees they grow u upon when you do find them. Yeah, are there any other tips like that when it comes to actually spotting them? You know, you just describe this idea, like if you find one here, it's a good thing to look around more. And there's so many things like that when it comes to shed hunting, Like if you find one side, you should take some extra time right in that area and circle out because the other side might be nearby. Or one idea is to change your perspective. So when I'm walking through a spot that I really think there's gonna be sheds, I'll stand on top of a dead tree to get a higher perspective, or all crouch down low to get a lower perspective, or all make sure to look behind me, because you know, sometimes there's different obstacles blocking view. Is there anything like that that would apply to mushroom hunting too, or something else entirely? Yeah, So I I've done a lot of like most of my public or a lot of my mushroom hunting has been done on public lands. And sometimes you'll be in an area that you very clearly got beaten to um You'll come upon these little stems of morale mushrooms that have been pinched off in little groups, and you'll recognize that someone else has been there. When that's the case, then you want to get off the trails. If that person is like following a game trail or something, they're likely just gonna stick on that game trail. Um. And then think about other things on the ground that like act as um. What's the word I'm looking for here, Like little nurseries for morale mushrooms. And so a few examples of this would be like around a down tree, You'll have this bark on the ground. If you remove some of that bark, a lot of times you'll have morale mushrooms growing right there. They're just out of sight. Um. So that's a great place you can find morales. Another example that was mushroom hunting the sandbar in Nebraska one time, and I kicked over a tumbleweed and there was like this huge patch of twenty morales sitting underneath this tumbleweed. And so there's some things like that that's that's not always necessary, um, But if you weren't an area that has competition, then keep that in mind. As far as finding morales just anywhere. This may seem obvious, but not enough foragers, pay attention to the other mushrooms in the area. A lot of mushrooms favor the exact same kind of conditions that morales do, and so if you're walking and all of a sudden you spot some shaggy manes or spot some inky caps whatever. Um, stop what you're doing and really look around, because there's a great chance that morales and that morals are in that area. Mhm um, what about this. I take binoculars with me every time I go shed on it. And every time I see something that even gives me the tiniest bit of curiosity that it might possibly be an antler, I pull up my bios and I glass it up. I'd always be rather be safe than sorry. Do you do something similar mushrooms? Do you bring byn Nope, nothing like that, because you're often mushroom hunting and like these closed quarters. Um, you're never going to spotted mushroom that's more than like ten yards away. So something like binoculars it's necessary. But other things that you do want to bring with you. This is like a very um like low gear activity is mushroom hunting. You don't need binoculars, but you should. You need something to carry the mushrooms in. And this is something that all of the best borgers do, But they carry their morales in a mesh bag. And the reason for that is is the mesh bag is delicate enough that it doesn't like crush the mushrooms. It's not like putting them in your pocket or throwing them in your backpack where you also have a camera and a bottle of water. So you you need to store them in some place that they're not going to be crossed. But part of the mesh bag thing is that morales are spread by these trillions of spores that are inside those brainy caps. And so in theory, as you're carrying around these mushrooms that you just found, you were helping distribute those spores in other areas, so that that's not a necessity. Um, But it's like a nice nod to future mushroom hunters that they can find those as well. Yeah. Man, that's karma right there. I love it. Um. So so we gotta we have to talk about one step that happens before putting them in your special future mesh bag, which is how to properly pick a mushroom. The first couple of morales I found I did this wrong. I later found out, Um, can you walk me through the correct way to pick a mushroom? So and in this wasn't until recently that I understood this better, but of morale. Mushroom hunters will tell you too. Either when you find a mushroom, a pinch it off at ground level and just take with you what is visible, or the more serious people will carry a scissors or knife with them and do a clean cut right at ground level. What I've learned is that that's actually not really necessary. It's not indicative of helping that morale grow in the future. Unlike some other mushrooms, um, morales don't have a volva that is kind of like that root system, and so whether or not you pull a mushroom out of the ground isn't going to determine if the mushrooms grow again there next year. But I still prefer to just take what's above ground level, because often when you're pulling these things out of the ground, you're just bringing dirt with you, um and other things that you're going to end up removing later on. So it's it's dealer's choice. I just still prefer to take what is above the ground and leave everything else. Okay, alright, I feel a little less bad about what I did then, Um so all right, then that brings us very naturally to the next step. In the process. We've we've picked them carefully, we put them in our mesh bag, We've spread our spores all over the place for future generations of mushroom hunters. Now we get them home. I made this mistake myself. I stored, I cleaned or stored my mushrooms wrong and ended up drying them out and not, you know, not getting as good of a final product last time I tried this. What's the proper protocol for once I get home with all those mushrooms? Should I should I clean them? How should I do that? Where? Should I put them in the fridge, outside in the bag? What? Tell me? Walk me through the whole thing. So with morales, the less cleaning the better. Again, while they appear to have like this firm flesh, it's still pretty delicate. And so if you get a morale that doesn't have any kind of bugs living in it or little worms, or it's not really sandy, then just like a gentle rinse will do. But it's very common that you get a whole bunch of morales um from kind of a muddy area after like a fresh rain, and so they're covered in dirt and they've got these little insects living in them, and you can see these little holes in the cap of the mushroom where worms have been in. And with that you'll have to do thorough cleaning that can look like a number of different things. Um. Gender Razl is a great forager from the Northeast. And her preferred method and she's picked when they mushrooms, as anybody I know, is to do this very gentle uh soaking of mushrooms. So if you've got a bowl full of mushrooms, you run water over them, cold water, and then you shake them around in this content in or whatever the container is. Um. Her description was at a scale of one to ten. Like the vigor that she uses for shaking these is a three, So it's like fairly gentle that you josti these mushrooms around. Then you get rid of that water, and then sometimes you do this two or three times over. UM. That's like a pretty standard way to clean a morale is just toss them in some water and then you have to let them dry. UM. Whether that means laying them on paper towels in your refrigerator or if you have like um cookie sheets where you have that air coming up from underneath putting those in your refrigerator. Those are great things to do. You can cut your mushrooms in half vertically before cleaning them. I think that's the best way to do it rather than cleaning them whole. That kind of helps gets out some of those insects and stuff. But if you have morales that um seem like they really have lots of little creepy crawlers in them, you might have to do like a twenty minute silk in some salt water. UM that that's not super common. Usually just like standard cleaning methods can do it. But however you clean them, whether it's just a rinse or a twenty minute silk and salt water, that drying is super crucial. So put them on paper towels, put them on those drying sheets, whatever that is. When it comes to cooking them, you want to do it ideally like within twenty four hours. UM that's the window where they taste best. You can do it two days later, you can do it three days later, but the quality continues to go down. So you want to eat them usually within that first twenty four hours and usually not clean them until like an hour before you're going to cook them, so that you you just clean them, and now you've let them dry and they they've firmed up again and got rid of that water, and now they're going to be a good product for cooking. So what about that in between time period though, between when I found them and before I washed them cook because the Washington cook is gonna happened the last hour, but between when I found them twenty four hours ago and then how do I store them? Doesn't matter how I store them. I've heard this paper bag thing before. Is that what you should do? What do you do with them before you get to that final step? Yeah, it really does matter how you store them. It's super important that whatever you do, your mushrooms can breathe, and so it like paper bags are probably the most common answer to this, that if if you pick them on a Monday and you're not going to clean them and cook them until Tuesday, that you just put them in a paper bag and then put those in your refrigerator. Um. Now, when when I say that they need to breathe, um, I really want to stress that because you might think that, Okay, well, I can take all these morales that they have and put them in like this big salad bowl. Or something and then put those in my fridge. But all those morales at the bottom of the salad bowl, they're not breathing properly, and so those are going to like start to deteriorate and get really soft, and they're not going to be a nice product when you're done. And so whether that means like storing them in a paper bag or laying them out on a plate um or whatever that is, it's super important to have them cool and let them breathe. So refrigeration is a must. Yes, Okay, what about like laying them out on a cookie sheet you describe that for the drying press. What about lay them on a cookie sheet in the fridge too, because that way they could all be spread out. Um, I'll get air and then just throw that in there. Does that work? Yeah, that's a great practice. Whatever you can do to help each mushroom breathe a little bit and stay cool, that's what you need to do. Just the absolute worst thing you could do is like throw them in a tupware dish and snap the lid on. Um. Even if you put those in a fridge, they're gonna come out all slimy um and soft. It's not going to be a nice product. So I found my most morales ever last year. I actually like I was looking for them. I didn't actually I didn't go out proactively, but when I was turkey hunting or doing other work, I was kind of peeking around. And so I found a handful. And but I didn't do any of my homework leading up to that. Like, the only step I took was the fact that I'll kind of pay attention, and so I pulled them out of the ground all the way, so I got a bunch of dirt on them, and then when I got them home, I threw them in plastic bags and so it was like everything wrong, not a good end product. So I wish I had done this podcast a year ago. Um, but okay, I'm gonna do it right this year. I've I know the places to look, I know how to pick them the right way. I know how to properly store them and how to clean them. Now it's time to cook them. What are your what are your favorite mushroom morale recipes or preparations or ideas. The simplest thing, uh is I think the best way to cook a morale is like the simplest whatever you can do to like let those mushrooms gine and so make that like the ingredient in whatever you're doing. Um, unlike some other wild mushrooms that I take you're not You don't want to take a morale and like mix it with a soup or put it in a pasta that also has chicken and like these bold sauce flavors and anything like that, You're just not doing it justice in that case. And so my favorite way to cook morale is just sauteing it in butter with a little bit of garlic. Um. And so once you have these morales that have been sliced in half, vertically cleaned and dried, then you just get a sautape and like really hot with butter that is popping, and then just toss them in there for a few minutes with a little bit of salt, pepper and garlic. I think it's the simplest way in the best way to cook morales. Is there the risk of over cooking morals like a lot of things, you can dry them out. Um, Like, how do you know when you gotta stop cooking? I guess this is my question. Yeah, that's that's a really tough one to answer, You certainly can overcook a morale. Um. If this is your first time messing with morales, you might be a little bit startled that the end product um comes out like kind of shriveled and uh like gets darker. Um, So you can overcook a morale, but I think you'll sort of naturally know like when they're done, and you can't like there's no safety hazard really an undercooking morale. So I always like lean more towards the side of these might not be at perfection than going beyond like what that window is a perfection? Okay, so a few minutes at a pretty hot saute and give him a shot. Yeah, yep. And then besides that, like other things you can do if if you have a super bountiful harvest, Um, that's when it's maybe time to get creative and do other stuff like toss them in a pasta where that is the focus, or put them on top of a burger, or serve them next to um venison steak or whatever that is. Or um, you can get really midwestern and throw them in a deep frier first you would like batter them with some flour, freeze them for a little bit, tossom in the freezer for like thirty minutes and let those get kind of firm to like where you would be throwing a French fry in a deep fat fryer, same sort of thing with a morale mushroom, lets firm open a freezer for just a little bit tossom in the deep fat fryer. Um. Other people I've seen will not slice their morales. Every every morale I've ever cooked has been sliced vertically. It's just like a really standard way to do it. I've seen other people take and inject the morale that has not been sliced with like cream, cheese, um, and then like throwing that in the deep fat fryer on the grill. That's certainly an option. I don't love that idea because you don't want to get them as clean and morales tend to like harvest quite a bit of um whatever sort of soiler in so if it's in a sandy or soil um, it's super super important to get that sand out. And cutting them in half like really helps with that process. And so you can't keep them whole and get creative with some of those other things. But I would wait until you have like ten pounds of morales to screw it out with it man. Um. I I am legitimately converted, I think, at least from from an intrigue standpoint, like, I am legitimately ready to get into this, to take it serious, to find some mushrooms. Um. And shame on anybody who chose not to listen to this episode because it wasn't just about daring. I hope, I hope people were willing to give this thing a shot because I I think this is pretty cool. I know there's a lot of people love musher money, um, but it seems like such a natural thing for deer hunters to add to our to our schedule throughout the year, a fun new thing to do out there while we're learning our properties or learning the public clan over to hunt and get some good food out of it. So I'm pumped. I'm pumped give a shot. The only downside Spencers that we've got like eight inches of brand new snow to the here in Michigan. So I don't think I've got mushrooms in my near near future, but hopefully hopefully soon. That's okay, Like one of one of the things that attributes to whether or not it's going to be a good spring for morales is if the soil is very moist in the spring. So if you get a late snowfall before that mushroom growing season, that's great. A lot of people love to see that. So while I might suck right now, um, in like three weeks when those morales are popping, you might be happy that it happened. All right, you're making my Friday man, Thank you? Is there any final there anything glaring that we need to know that I haven't asked you about yet? Or have we got? We got? The deer hunters gude to much from hunting covered. I think there's one thing that deer hunters would very much so relate to with morales, and that is that, um, it's it's super beneficial to understand the growing process of the morales. And so a lot of foragers refer to this thing as the pop. They'll be like, are the morales popping? Did the morales start popping yet? Oh? Yeah, the morales started popping here last week. And that kind of infers that, like the morales all of a sudden, like this three inch mushroom just shows up above ground. That's really not the case. It's not the pop. Isn't this thing that happens in the course of a weekend and then it's just totally over with, Like the rut. It's kind of this drawn out thing. Um. There isn't like a lockdown where it just stops. And so if you are a white tail hunter who has this private ground with morale mushrooms on it, and you go out and you find all these morales that are just like two inches big, and you see in the forecast that for the next you know, four days, it's gonna be in the sixties and seventies and there's like a fifty chance of rain on two of those days. You can just leave those morales go and then come back in a few days. Because the morale growing process isn't this thing that just like happens and then it's over with with that nice weather, those morales that keep growing. And so I've had cases in the past where I found morales that were two or three inches big. I saw that the weather was perfect for growth, and then you come back in three days, and those morales have often doubled or tripled in size. And so don't let people talking about the morale pop kind of Uh, fool you into thinking that it's like this thing that happens and it's this burst of grow and then it's just over with. Interesting. I was about to say, we should do a mushroom Fresh radio. I mean, that's a free idea for somebody out there. That's that's a good one. No, we should claim it, Spencer, that's gonna be our next spin off. That's right. One. One more thing I think is worth covering, maybe not in great detail, but you can sell morale mushrooms. Um. I know this is like a really hard time of the year for people with COVID and layoffs and things like that, so this could be like a real option that you'd consider. But morale mushrooms have this incredible market that changes from year to year, and it changes within the year. Um, some years you'll get like fifteen dollars a pound, other years you can get fifty dollars a pound. Generally you can kind of expect to get that like fifteen to thirty dollar range, but there are things that dictate within a given season what that price is going to be. And so if if you live in the Upper Midwest, um, and the growing season just starts and you find all these mushrooms on the south facing slopes and in this sandy or soil before anybody else, people are going to be willing to pay higher prices because there's not a ton of morales in the market. But if it is this bomb spring for everybody and the entire region has this perfect weather, UM, and the market is flooded with morales that you might only get like ten or fifteen dollars a pound, and how to sell morales is anymore than this has changed like over the last decade of mushroom hunting, Facebook is the easiest in the most obvious place to look in the marketplace. UM genuinely you'll find different sorts of buyers. UM. Grocery stores are pretty common, more like UM niche grocery stores. For example, You're not gonna see like a high V or a Sunshine or a Krogers or anything like that. They're not gonna be buying house. But some of these smaller grocery stores will be restaurants are definitely like the number one buyer UM and not like dive bars or Applebe's or anything like that, places that you need a reservation for. They're going to be looking to buy morales, and that might change with with COVID and and how things have adapted. For restaurants, it might not be the same this year, but they're great places to sell. And then farmers markets are probably where you can go and get the highest dollar amounts. Again, that's likely different this spring because farmers markets are probably shut down, but those are great options to go and sell morales. Check your regulations in your state. UM. Some places don't allow you to sell morales that we're taking off public lands. Other places make you have like a special foraging permit things like that, So that's something to consider before you sell morales. And the morale market is always dictated by what's happening in your region. So if you are a mushroom hunter in Ohio, UM, and it's like a really good season down south, it doesn't matter what's happening with the morale mushrooms down in Georgia. It just matters what's happening like Ohio and Pennsylvania and Indiana places like that. It's a very regional thing, so you can keep that in mind as you're considering the pros and cons of selling your morales. Have you ever personally sold in your morales. I did, um back in college. I paid for a lot of beer with morale mushrooms. It was quite common then, UM. And that was when the harvests were like just ridiculous for a few years. UM. Places were flooding all the time, and the morale numbers were just outstanding. UM. But that's kind of changed. On an average year, if I just have like five pounds and it's too much for me to eat or something, I'll just give it away. It's a super nice gesture you can do for people and landowners, um, especially if they also realize the value that you're handing them something that's worth forty pound and that can't be bought in a most grocery stores and has this super unique nutty flavor. Those are the kinds of people that you want to give him around mushrooms too. Yeah, some got a great way to keep your hunting permission. That's right, yep. So back to your selling mushrooms are real quick, I I gotta believe. Is it kind of like a drug deal, Like did you pull into a back alley and open the trunk of your car and kind of open your coat jacket up a little bit to cover it up? And have the guy coming real close and you pass something in between your hands. Was it that kind of thing? No? Um, yeah I was. I was mostly selling too, some like local restaurants. But there is this funny thing that if you like, um, if you think of a movie and they're like doing this drug deal and the buyer like comes in and lays down a lot of coke and then sniffs it and he's like, yeah, that's that's good stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's there's something like that with the morales. Well, they're like they'll like hold it up in front of their face and kind of rotate it like it's a precious jewel. Um, and they'll like examine if it has too much sand in it or not, or like what, um, if these mushrooms are too dried out or how long you've been holding onto them. All that process kind of takes place. Um. So it is like sort of similar to a drug deal. Shore. I love it. I absolutely love it. If if people want to learn more about this kind of thing, we've got we've got some other resources, right Spencer, Can you can you tell us where to find some of that? Yeah, So if you go to the meat eater dot com and go under our cooking section and then our foraging section. I've written probably a half dozen articles this spring on morale mushroom unting. You'll see our things from from last year as well, and we cover everything that we just talked about, and possibly in even greater detail. The wind to find morales, how to find morales, where to find morales, how to cook morales, how to al morale's. All those things are covered around the media here dot com. Yeah, lots of good recipes too, I think right, not not quite so far. Um. I think this is this episode is coming out here next week and Danielle Pruittt is currently working on a morale recipe for the end of April. I'm writing something on how to dehydrate morale mushrooms. So, um, there's not a ton there right now, but there will be cool, all right, man. Well, I thoroughly enjoyed this change of pace and I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna be a mushroom hunting man this year, and if I don't find a boatload, I will personally blame you. That sounds good. And and if you're listening to this and you have questions, reach out to me. I'd love to help you and answer any questions I can. Like I said, morale, Like I said before, morale, mushrooms are like very closely guarded secrets among people. But I don't want that to be the case. So if there's something that you still aren't sure about, slide into my d m s and Instagram or on Facebook, whatever, and I'll try to help you out. You're such a cool young kids spencer. You just told us to slide into your d m s. That's right, and talk about possibly like the oldest thing there is to like have a discussion around. And that's much ladies and gentlemen. The hot tub hunter, good good stuff, my friend. Thanks for thanks for walking us through all this, and that is a rap. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Hope you gonna get out there and do some mushroom hunting in addition to whatever hopefully fun, safe outdoor activities you have planned for the spring. We're just starting to get some sunshine here in Michigan. It's feeling very nice. I'm just dying he gets some of that sun and some outdoor times, so that's a great way to do it. So thank you for listening. Be safe, be well, and until next time, stay wired to hunt.

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