By Sally Voth — Daily Staff Writer

It's hunting season again, and this time you can leave your rifle or your bow behind. You'll still need patience, a sharp eye and a good hunting ground.

And the spoils are delicious.

The Northern Shenandoah Valley is rife with morel mushrooms, and with the devoted men and women who hunt and eat them.

Todd Crowder, of Edinburg said he's been hunting the fungi for most of his 44 years.

"When mushrooms are in season, when they're up [I go] daily, at least three or four times a week," said the owner of Crowder Pest Control.

Gore resident Allen Hahn Jr., 52, has been mushroom picking for more than 20 years. A friend turned him on to the hobby during an unsuccessful turkey hunt. After calling it a day, the friend spotted some walnut trees and suggested they look for morels.

"That's how I got clued into them," Hahn said. "His wife fried them up for us. I've been looking for them ever since."

There are dark morels and white morels, with the darker variety coming in earlier, Crowder and Hahn said.

"I've picked [the dark ones] many times in the last week of March, the first week of April," Crowder said.

That's about the same time Hahn finds the brown mushrooms.

"Then about the time they're over with, the white ones will start coming," he said. "I was picking white ones [two weeks ago]. Normally by the week of Apple Blossom, that's usually about the end of them."

Temperature and humidity play major roles in when the mushrooms come up, Crowder said. Rain followed by a 70-degree day is "magic."

Like many a good mushroom hunter, Crowder keeps his hunting grounds close to the vest. It's "absolutely" important to be secretive about fertile mushroom lands.

"Time proves that," Crowder said.

He does allow that poplar groves are good spots to find the lurking mycelia.

"Where you look is around walnut trees, poplar trees, apple trees, ash trees," Hahn said.

Crowder has helped others find mushrooms.

"But, I've found the key to success is have good walking legs," he said. "I do it to keep in shape.

"People will say, 'I just can't see them,' but if they will just stay with it a little bit, you will develop an eye. I have plenty of people who say 'I can't see them,' and given a little bit of time, they can.

"People have a tendency to rush through. If you develop a discipline of patience, you will be much more relaxed. And, that's key to finding mushrooms.

"Whenever you find a mushroom, look above it and below it. They grow up and down a hill."

Hahn also is coy about where he goes in his quests for mushrooms.

"I won't tell you where I go," he said. "Somebody has found where I've been going and this place was overrun with people. It's kind of like turkey hunting. You start telling people, well, the next thing you know, you've got competition the following year."

Aside from scrumptious, describing the taste of morels can be difficult.

"The word fungus is the best way I can say it," Crowder said. "It has a fungus taste. [It has a] mild to delicate flavor. My wife loves to fry them, and that's probably the No. 1 way mushrooms are fixed."

His favorite recipe, though, results in a sort of mushroom soup.

"[Mushrooms are] better than fried deer meat," according to Hahn, a Rubbermaid employee.

Hahn's wife also is the mushroom chef of their house, rolling them in flour and frying them up.

"They're good, but you can overeat them because they're real rich," he said. "I ate so many I had the awfulest bellyache. I was a hog. I didn't eat none for about two or three years, and it was my own fault."

Hahn also will make a mushroom sandwich, and has had them with scrambled eggs.

Each of the men has hit mushroom mother lodes.

"It's not at all uncommon — I have a couple of friends who pick a couple of thousand mushrooms a year," Crowder said. "Last couple of years have been bad years, but this year was an exceptional year."

He and a friend gathered about 800 in 31/2 hours.

"One year, I think me and my boys together picked about 800, but that was a super good year," Hahn said. "That year I gave a lot away. I enjoy just looking for them and finding them and sharing them if I've got plenty to pass around."

Crowder suggested turning a mushroom upside down and tapping it while heading to the next mushroom.

"That will dislocate any spore that might be in the cap," he said.

Another mushroom hunter, Leonard Buddington, of the Zepp area, suggests carrying the mushrooms in a mesh bag, thus spreading spores around. This year, he sold 26 pounds of morels to the Inn at Little Washington.

"I mostly give away about 25 pounds," Buddington said.

His son, Daniel, 11, gives away all those he finds.

"I won't eat wild things," the W.W. Robinson Elementary fifth-grader said. "I just stick them in a bag and give them to my dad."

His dad turned a profit on his avid hobby.

"He made like hundreds of dollars on them," Daniel said.

Recipe for morels

Rinse the mushrooms. Split them. Fill a cereal bowl with them and put a pat of real butter on top. Salt them, and microwave for two minutes.

"It makes a wonderful mushroom soup," Todd Crowder said. "It makes a tremendous amount of fluid. It's just like opening a can of boiled mushrooms that you would buy at the grocery store."

— Source: Todd Crowder

*Contact Sally Voth at svoth@nvdaily.com.