As I walked through the woods on a breezy day in May, I halted suddenly and searched for what my eyes had just told me they had seen. There, I found it! It indeed was a morel — a nice, big gray at that — right where my eyes had told me it was. I remained motionless, knowing that where there’s one morel, often there are more. Also, I didn’t want to potentially trample on any morels before I made a complete scan of the area for more. That big morel could wait. It paid off, too. After a second or two more of looking, I picked up on the “brain” pattern of the morel. Then another one. And then another one. All of the sudden, it seemed as if there were morels everywhere. I knew I had to start picking them, or I would forget where I had seen some of the others. That’s always a good feeling, right?
In thirty minutes of looking, I found 31 morels, almost all of which were good-sized. Not a bad morel hunting escapade. Certainly I wasn’t up to par from the last year, though. In one day of the last year, I found, along with a hunting partner, 265 “in-good-condition” gray morels — we excluded the half-caps we found (which, by the way, exceeded our gray morel find) — in just three hours of hunting. Although that may be a sizable bag in comparison to the time taken to find them, it is not rare to accomplish a feat equal to or greater than that day’s find. Simply knowing where and when to look for morels can boost your success rate by proportions that you never would have thought to be realistic.
One of the most important factors to your success in morel hunting is the weather. The right temperatures at the right times are both crucial to morel hunting. Because I prefer the gray and yellow morels, and do not bother picking the half-caps, I start paying attention to morel hunting when the temperatures begin to stretch for the seventies. It is far from impossible to find a few morels poking their heads up through the leaves before the temperatures reach seventy degrees, so I make sure to begin my hunts a little earlier. Half-caps enjoy cooler temperatures, coming out in the high-sixties — which, besides the black morel, makes them the first morels to come out.
Although ideally morels come out everywhere when the temperatures become favorable, it seems to be that morels only poke their heads out on the southern and western sides of hills in the early part of the morel season. For instance, I do not even bother looking on north and east facing slopes early on — I focus all my attention on the southern and especially the western sides. Certainly this is never a rule; it simply is what I have found to be most common and productive. However, when temperatures continue to climb and the season continues to extend, don’t limit your search to one side or another. They should be everywhere by then.
Because morels are mushrooms and feed on dead things, they are often found by or near rotten logs and stumps. Much of my personal morel hunting success has come from finding morels by dead stumps, the best of which include elm, apple, and birch. Remember this when you search for morels. In the event that you recently cut down a dead elm tree or know of one’s location, hit that area hard in the morel season. More often than not, you’ll find several nice ones just waiting for you.
A side note on where to look for morels is as follows: if you find a morel mushroom, keep looking in that area. Obviously the area is ideal for mushrooms to grow in, so keep looking. Don’t waste too much time in areas that you haven’t found any morels.
Morel hunting is an enjoyable sport for many people, myself included. There’s something about spotting a morel peeking up through the foliage and shouting out, “There’s one!” to your hunting partner. So hopefully with these tips, you’ll be shouting that out a lot more this year.