This Season: Morel-picking season is almost upon us

Like gold prospectors, morel hunters often dream of the big strike.

Finding the mother lode is our version of the wall hanger - the equivalent of the trophy buck or bass.

Even when we find them only here and there and now and then, morels amply reward the quest because they taste good, live in beautiful places and spring forth when we are most eager to spend time outdoors.

But now, with picking about to start if it has not already, when we entertain morel visions before falling asleep at night, we do not picture a lonesome little gray lurking inconspicuously among similarly colored leaves and twigs.

We envision profusions of morels cascading downhill in clumps and clusters, too many to contain in a single bag.

Though it has never happened to me, I have viewed Internet videos of hunters collecting 500 under a single tree, enough to fill a gunny sack.

In my own experience, 50 mushrooms in a matter of minutes is a memorable spot, and 100 or more constitutes a big strike. In a typical mushroom season, each occurs occasionally, but mother lodes are fewer and farther between.

I still vividly recall the late April day in 2005 when my hunting buddy Arthur Clark of Quasqueton and I struck two dead elms within sight of each other that yielded, respectively, 162 and 167 medium-sized luminous gray morels.

As we lugged them out of the woods, we refined our definition of 'mother lode” as mushrooms thick and numerous enough that their beginning and end can't be easily discerned, giving the impression of morels to infinity.

That definition certainly fit the tableau we beheld a couple years later when we investigated a solitary dead elm protruding from a washout gully.

Wherever we looked within a 30-foot radius of the tree, we saw clumps of yellow morels ranging from four to six inches tall. They were so conspicuous, standing naked on bare dirt, that it took us no more than 10 minutes to collect all 200 - our biggest find yet around a single tree.

On that occasion, we filled three large grocery sacks and had to dump one of them into the bed of the pickup to continue picking.

With our overreliance on superstition in our pursuit of morels, Arthur and I have since concluded that it's ill luck to carry more than one mushroom receptacle at a time - a belief that caused minor inconvenience last year when, during an exceptionally productive mushroom season, we 'bagged out” on several occasions.

To maximize efficiency, we always spread out, each checking likely spots and each, in the normal course of events, picking his own mushrooms.

Though we try to remain within sight or earshot of each other, we sometimes stray too far and have to reconnect, if the need arises, via cellphone.

The need arises when one of us finds a profusion and wants to share the sight and the fun with the other.

If there is anything better than hearing your mushroom hunting partner holler, 'Hey, you'd better get over hear, I need another bag and another set of eyes,” it is being the one doing the hollering.