Reporters, Reputations, and Urban Hunting


As I mentioned earlier, I am in St. Louis for work attending a two-day training course. Normally I would welcome such a diversion, but in the middle of the season it takes me far away from my honey holes. However, I had been here before in winter and saw a very promising section of woods that I wanted to check in spring. I have never hunted for morels in St. Louis before but I figured what the heck.

Normally this would just have been a scouting trip in a new area, hoping that my general rules that work at home send me looking in the right spots here. However, this hunt had a little more added pressure.

Every year, I get a few requests to do interviews about mushroom, especially morel, hunting. Sometimes I turn them down, but I often I accept and take the reporter out to areas I don't usually hunt but know to produce to see if we can scare up a few so they can eat some and truly understand why we hunt these little devils. This year, a journalist from St. Louis contacted me and asked for an interview. Since I was already planning to be up here for work and even planning to go out and hunt a little while in town, I invited her to come along. It wasn't until the next day, that I realized my potential mistake. It is one thing to take someone to a known area and find a morel, it is an entirely different thing to do so in a brand new area. It was added pressure for sure, but, I had done it to myself.

With the pressure mounting, I did a drive by in the morning before my business engagement just to see if, one, the land was public (thankfully it was as I was so happy when I saw the yellow MDC signs) and second I had to find access to it. The trail I had scoped out in winter was blocked by a flooded creek (there's a bit of flooding in St. Louis right now). But using some ingenuity I found a way to access it and went to work.

After work I met with the journalist and headed to park. I will not divulge the location, but I will say it was the first time I have covered parking when morel hunting. Chalk up one advantage to urban hunting.

So here I am with reporter in tow, heading into uncharted waters. Sorry for the metaphor, I have been watching too much Deadliest Catch recently. Has anyone else noticed how much crab fishing is similar to morel hunting. But I digress, and that sounds like a topic for a future blog entry.

Anyway as we were walking in I told her, there are three things to consider when hunting a new area: Is the habitat right? Is the timing right? and has anyone beat you to them? I knew we were looking good on the first two; but, this being the city, I was very wary of the third. As we got into the woods I began to see tell-tale signs of other hunters. The one thing I did notice is that the circles of footprints where in the places I expected them to be, so it seemed that my rules might works here.

As we found a habitat that looked similar to where I had found mine over the weekend in Columbia, the footprints and signs of previous hunters became more evident. And yet there was hope as ti didn't take long before I was able to spot one lone fellow sitting there near a tree.

Whew, at least we didn't get skunked I thought to myself as I breathed a sigh of relief. We continued to hunt while she quizzed me about all kinds of mushroom hunting fact and lore. The finding was slow at first. I think we had only found two after the first 30 minutes, but soon we found an area that had been overlooked and the story hound became a mushroom hunter and found her first. She found a few more along the way and held her own. On the way back to the car she impressed me by spotting one that I was walking right past. I also have to give her credit for staying out the two or so hours it took. Most reporters just go out for 20-30 minutes and then run off to write their stories, so I have to respect her for that.

In the end, we came out with 21 one to two-and-a-half inch grays/yellows. So, even in the middle of the urban jungle, after lord knows how many hunters had been doing the morel waltz the previous weekend, you can still scrounge enough for a meal. And best of all, my reputation is safe, at least for today.