Andrea knows what she’s aiming for hidden caches of morel mushrooms, spicy cutleaf toothwort, and pungent ramps. Her long, silvery hair and bright orange hunter’s vest catch your eye as she heads confidently off the deer-worn trails. It's just like any kind of hunting-it's a big-time addiction. Naturalist and mushroom hunting expert Andrea Moore is easy to spot amongst the grey pines and beeches. 'You start finding them and you start thinking, 'Now I know what I'm looking for,'' he said. He said there are areas along the James and Missouri rivers with morels, but getting out and walking is the only way to find them. Information, recipes, morel sightings map, and unique morel. Because, of course, there are several poisonous mushrooms. The Great Morel is the leading resource for morel mushroom information and everything morel. He explained knowing areas that have elm and oak trees is important and to do some research before picking. 'The best hill is one that faces south so it warms faster,' Merxbauer said. 'The best way to eat them is to cut them in half, clean them and saute them in a pan with butter,' he said.Īs for advice for those people who are interested in diving into morel hunting? His customers are from all over, but mainly Minnesota, South Dakota and Montana, and some local restaurants also buy them. The morel man: Parkston’s Merxbauer takes mushroom hunting from hobby to passion PARKSTON - After parking along a gravel road, go through the barbed-wire fence and head down into a ravine. One day he gathered 80 pounds of morels near the Pactola Reservoir in the Black Hills. Merxbauer said 2018 was one of his biggest hauls. With the significant flooding in Nebraska, though, he suspects it may be a tough season there. He has about 150 pounds of orders to fill this year, and he'll travel to the Black Hills in South Dakota, and perhaps Nebraska, to gather his crop. At first, when he moved to Parkston from Fergus Falls, Minnesota, the morels he found were shared with family and friends. He started taking the hobby a little more serious about five years ago. It's hard for Merxbauer to estimate hours and miles traveled each year hunting mushrooms. If it's too wet, they get soggy and water-logged, so the season is pretty short.' 'Once they start coming up, you've got about two, maybe three weeks,' Merxbauer said. April and May is the ripe time of year for Midwestern states as morels need the ground temperature to be about 52 to 53 degrees to grow. Dad loaded us into the car and we drove to an Iowa woodland where we would scatter and search the forest floor for morels. According to websites that track morel locations and where they're growing, some of the first mushrooms of the year were spotted in January in southern California. Hunting Morel Mushrooms Some of my earliest memories are of the family trips are when we were hunting morel mushrooms. Merxbauer said ticks, mosquitoes and difficulty finding morels are what scare most people from getting into the hobby.ĭue to the warmer temperatures, the southern United States see significantly more morels, and the people who hunt them. It's a special breed of people who hunt morels.

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