Folks looking for morel mushrooms are having an epic season thanks to the abundance of rain.
Two families in Warrensburg, Mo had an impressive haul over the weekend and found more than 2,000 morel mushrooms in one hunt according to FOX4 Tv.
“We’ve hunted this same exact location for years and years,” said Mack Phillips, an avid morel mushroom hunter. “We always find some there. We usually do pretty good. It was everywhere you look, every tree. You couldn’t go anywhere without finding them.”
Along with his parents and two friends, Phillips believes they collected more than 2,400 mushrooms before they lost count.
Their secret location in Warrensburg proved to be a gold mine this hunting season.
“We all had our own bags, and then we had two great big bags. We’d fill our little bags, then dump them into our big bags. We had our shirts full, hats full. We couldn’t even hunt until dark,” Phillips told FOX4.
He described the impromptu hunt over the weekend as “once in a lifetime.” It’s an activity he said he’s enjoyed since he was a small child.
“We eat a lot of them. We share them with a lot of friends. We have people over and have big morel fries. It’s fun,” Phillips said.
Hunting mushrooms is a long-standing family tradition for Phillips. For anyone hoping to enjoy the unique delicacy, he said, “keep it simple.”
“Just flour and deep fry. We tried putting some on the grill, they were decent, but weren’t as good as traditional frying. That’s the best way to have them,” Phillips said.
He said he plans to return to their secret location before the season ends.
Rain is likely cause of great mushroom season
Ron Cook, founder of the Missouri Morel Hunting Facebook page, tells the Springfield News-Leader this is going to be one of the more fruitful seasons in the last few years.
Many Midwesterners enjoy eating the fungus that can mostly be found in the forest during the spring. They come up annually in March and April.
Farming the elusive gourmet mushroom is difficult and may not yield any results. If you have a keen eye then you may be able to spot one in the woods.
Cook has developed a crowd-sourced map to help hunters find more Missouri morel mushrooms. Fans share pics of their confirmed finds to the Facebook page, and Cook helps map them.
The page also shares forecasts for hunting the mushrooms, which includes soil temperatures. It started as a project between friends and now the Facebook page has nearly 90,000 fans.
This is an example of one of their forecasts: “It appears to have been a fruitful weekend. The progression line is trending northerly at a nice pace. A low-pressure system will arrive this Thursday, bring cooler temperatures that will affect most of the state into next week. We expect this to halt the progression line and stunt the growth of what is above ground currently. It will have no overall effect on the season.”
Some wild mushrooms are poisonous. Check the Missouri Department of Conservation’s mushroom guide to help you determine what is safe to eat.
