Last Monday, I went morel mushroom hunting—a.k.a. “binging”–with a few of my shroom collector buddies. We have started messing around over the last couple years with videos and this year we decided to step it up. As the founder of Outdoor Hub, I feel it is critical that our content covers the outdoors through all season, and sometimes this is experiential as in the case of the short video embedded below:
This hunt was filmed just outside of Kansas City, Missouri. Some friends and fellow morel junkies took us on the binging adventure along the river bottoms in and out of 12 plus miles of hiking. This video shows that hunting is not only about killing, rather it is about the time spent in nature and morel hunting is amongst my favorite of activities. I may even trade in deer hunting for morel hunting if I were forced to make a choice.
One of my favorite things about morels is the unknown factor. You never know what day they will pop. Their growth cycles are unpredictable, and the season is short as the conditions and ground temperature needs to be just right. In some parts of the country we get very segregated seasons. First the black or the grey morels come in and then it is the whites, and they are preceded by the yellows or the “jumbo booms” as we call them. In Kansas City, these mushrooms can come in together as the ground temperatures rise quicker than in the Midwest. This unpredictability combined with the short season (15-25 days) forces you to make your move quick.
Nobody likes to give up the whereabouts of the elusive morels. When you have a honey hole you don’t tell your friends, your family, even your wife and kids–unless they swear to keep it a secret. Morel mushroom hunting is the ultimate test of concentration and awareness in the woods as they are easy to walk past. Some people simply are not cut out for it, but many people are and each year I convert more and more non-mushroom hunters into binging junkies. The only downside is that finding morels along the side of the road has become more difficult as the sport grows in popularity.
We have two more mushroom hunting videos to shoot this year: one in Illinois and one in northern Michigan, and next year we are talking about trying to hit five states. After you watch one of our videos you will be thinking about morel hunting in a different light, and that is what we are after. I hope you enjoyed the video and you can find morel and other outdoor action on davidfarbman.com, morels.com, and outdoorhub.com!
