GET MORE OUT OF YOUR MOREL HUNTS

The fire that ripped through Washington’s eastern Blue Mountains in 2021 was not ordinary. This honey hole for blonde and brown morels is now ash. I’m hopeful it will produce morels galore from the burn, but the longevity of this cherry spot is no longer. However, it can still help you in your search. These old firs – especially grand firs – that morels favor are good starting points. Look for filtered light with good cover, swales on hillsides, and pine needle litter like this. Stay below 4,000 feet in April and stick to places that warm early. In May, the 4,000- to 5,000-foot mark in the Blues and other mountain ranges in Washington and Oregon is perfect. (JEFF HOLMES)

With the mushrooms emerging across the Northwest, a fanatic shares his advice for finding the coveted tasty treats – and a buttery recipe.

By Jeff Holmes

More than 10 springs ago, unexpected 45 mile per hour winds kept friends and me from launching during an insane Snake River spring Chinook season after we’d already made the muchanticipated trip to Little Goose Dam. We sought alternatives, stashed my boat at a small-town tackle store, and looked for refuge from huge gusts and a treeless landscape.

Knowing there were morels in them thar hills – the Blue Mountains, in this case – we headed south up the Tucannon River into a landscape that five years prior had suffered the year’s worst wildfire in the Lower 48, 2005’s School Fire. We parked at a trailhead and took off walking with dogs for miles, stumbling into maybe a few pounds of morels and lots of lessons about where these valuable little fungi will and will not grow.

That first day of morel picking, wandering the spring woods and laughing with friends and howling with good dogs now since passed, is high on the list of my best outdoor memories. It was a day that lit a fire for me that now burns white hot. I love morel mushrooms.

But I especially love the process. I love traveling across green spring landscapes to reach mountains where they erupt and then assessing the progression of spring and where the mushrooms might be popping. I like assessing

HUNTING HOW TO MAKE MOREL BUTTER

Fat-kid-created, fat-kid-perfected, morel butter is hands-down the best and most accessible and versatile food product I have discovered from the Pacific Northwest’s landscapes. This is not an exaggeration. Super-slow simmering prime morels in butter and then aerating the cooled product along with yet more butter creates something that’s fantastic on all meats, on eggs, on veggies, on any starch (especially air-popped popcorn or oven-hot bread), and on a spoon. This very specific recipe has been highly refined and, if followed, can make you very popular. Got friends or family who don’t like mushrooms? They’ll like this stuff. Just don’t tell them it’s mushrooms. I put away 3 gallons of the stuff this past May and am looking to double it this year. I see no reason to continue eating butter that does not have morels infused into it.

INGREDIENTS AND EQUIPMENT

*5 pounds of good- to excellent-grade morels 10 pounds salted butter 2 Crockpots High-speed (Ninja) blender 15 wide-mouth pint jars with lids Wide-mouth jar funnel Rubber scraper Table knife

*Use more or less mushrooms as available, but keep the 1:2 mushroom to butter ratio; 1:2.5 also works. Give your morels several water baths and float away all dirt and debris, and continue soaking, agitating and rinsing until siltfree. I do not salt my mushrooms. For people who do, they should use unsalted butter in this recipe. Better advice: do not salt your mushrooms. The tiny little harmless worms in morels will be cooked for 72 hours in this recipe, adding protein and in no way impacting anything other than avoiding overly salty morels.

When my mushrooms are super clean – and I know some people won’t even wash them but I’m not one of them – it is time to press them to begin to completely rid them of their water. I use nitrile gloves and squeeze the morels aggressively until most water is expelled. Then I squeeze them again. And again. Then they go in a Crockpot. Chop them if you want, but there is zero need I have found.

It took two good-size Crockpots to do 71/2 pounds, and I put 4 pounds of butter into each crock. The key is to slowly cook/confit the morels over 48 to 72 hours, alternating between low and sometimes “warm” if your Crock runs hot. You cook the mushrooms long enough to rid them of all of their water and to greatly intensify their flavor. For my latest batch, I cooked it for over two days and then let it cool and reheated it for another 24 hours before letting it cool to blend.

Once you have two Crockpots full of cooled but not solidified butter and confit morels, it’s time to blend with room temp butter, 8 pounds of it. You need a really aggressive blender, something like a Ninja blender that has blades up and down the length of the spindle. Any really powerful blender likely works, but food processors do not produce a smooth, aerated product. Once blended, I am able to ladle close to equal parts of the confit with roomtemperature butter and to blend it and aerate it to a very fine texture with some very small and desirable chunks of ’shroom. Or I can let the blender rip and make it smooth.

The exact process described keeps the butter just warm enough without melting that you can use a big spoon or ladle to put it in clean pint jars. I take a table knife and gently slam the jar down on the counter to make the butter settle while running the knife around the inside edge of the jar, which takes out air bubbles. Then I put on clean lids and label them and put them in the freezer. You can keep morel butter in the fridge for a really long time sometimes, but in the past I did not cook the mushrooms long enough nor squeeze them in advance hard enough. As a result, I used to leave water in it, and it would mold. It’s so precious that I keep mine in the freezer unless I’m going to use it.

Oh, and my best advice other than take this recipe seriously and follow the directions to get the water out? Do not try to add garlic, onions, spices, etc. Use good morels. Use lots of butter. Spend a long time cooking them in butter. Blend them with more butter. Put the product in jars. Stick them in the freezer. Keep one in the fridge. Eat aggressively. Repeat. Other flavors only get in the way. –JH

(JEFF HOLMES, BOTH)

Whether you labor for hours or find them quickly, the minute you find a morel stop. Slow down. Look all around you. There are likely more, and perhaps many more ...

This little clump of freshly emerged morels likely means there are more around. Pick these and comb the area.

This one is getting dark, but if it were salmon I’d still barbecue it. Morels often grow along and under fallen logs. Check logs in areas you are already finding them.

I gasped when I found this big, pancake-shaped morel; they come

in many shapes. (JEFF HOLMES, ALL)

environmental conditions – slope shading and exposure, contour lines, tree composition, understory plants and more – and I love moving slowly in the spring woods and interfacing with the forest at a microlevel. Shed antlers, newborn elk calves, predator sign, tiny delicate flowers and plants, giant snails, drumming grouse, mottled snowshoe hares, and innumerable other natural images flood into my mind as I think of the pursuit of these $30-a-pound mushrooms. I will blow off turkey hunting, spring Chinook fishing, and many other important pursuits in order to engage in this process and learn more every trip about how to find and harvest morels.

MOREL HUNTING IS an activity that costs nothing but the gas to get there. Just fill up a small pack with rain gear, bottled water, calories, a survival kit and extra bags in case you hit the mother lode. On my person I carry a bucket to pick into and bear spray or a pistol just in case of cougars, moose or the rare angry spring black bear. I was once almost stomped by a cow moose while on my hands and knees picking with dogs at heel, so I now never go afield without at least the means to blow a toxic cloud of capsicum into a critter’s snout. I don’t pick in high-traffic commercial picking areas – burns close to roads during the early season – but if I did, I’d carry a

Only an addict would display his day’s haul of morels like this. This mother lode of big blondes and browns inspired several more trips to a certain Blue Mountains slope to harvest these prime ’shrooms that came up in ideal conditions. I sort my morels into grades, but I sort one fewer grade than I used to. Leave the crumbling, buggy, dark, inky ones in the woods. If a morel has a smell different from the freshies you find, just leave it to release spores. Inky morels don’t taste great and foul the goodness of your

freshies. (JEFF HOLMES)

Overeager morel hunters can waste large pools of financial and temporal resources (author raises hand) chasing the earliest emergences of morels in the Pacific Northwest. I set a personal record by traveling almost 1,000 miles round trip for this one March morel in 2021. The charred remains of homes and aggressive commercial pickers gave an uncomfortable feel to the woods east of Roseburg. April through June is the standard morel season in the Northwest, depending on elevation and other environmental factors like weather, snowpack, progression of seasons, etc. (JEFF HOLMES)

pistol for emergencies with the most dangerous game: trashy humans in the woods with ill intent.

There’s hocus-pocus rumors about the need to pick into a mesh bag to disperse spores throughout the forest as you walk, but you can ignore this. Pick into what you want, but I like a hard-sided receptacle to protect the mushrooms. There’s also a lot of nonsense about how pulling a morel out of the ground will result in no mushrooms growing in that spot again. That said, it makes way more sense to carry a small knife to slice the stems to free the honeycombed little marvels from the earth. Doing so results in a cleaner stash of ’shrooms, meaning less cleaning and a better product.

The learning curve in morel picking is finding out where and when they grow and on what slopes and around which types of vegetation they regularly emerge. You will find that people are eye-rollingly guarded about morel information. They’re worse than crappie fishermen. I won’t give up my honey holes, obviously, but scan the detailed picture captions in this article for some Morel 101 information that can get you started and pointed toward success. NS

There’s nothing like hunting with a well-trained dog that understands its role, has drive and is eager to please. This Lab couldn’t get a mourning dove into the hands of its owner fast enough, so it could get back to hunting. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

The Joy Of Gun Dogs

This past bird season was a busy one. I went on over 100 hunts in multiple states for waterfowl, upland birds and other migratory birds. My pudelpointers went on most hunts with me, but I did have the opportunity to hunt with other dogs, too.

I love hunting different birds in different places with different people and seeing how their dogs work. The bond that a dog and their master share is, frankly, what motivates many of us to go hunting.

I went on a few hunts last season where there was no dog, and I didn’t like it. Walking across a field to pick up a goose or quail, or wading into a pond to fetch a duck, was lackluster compared to watching a dog work. Those hunts made me miss and appreciate hunting with my dogs even more. SOME DOGS I got to hunt with were just happy to be out. They weren’t from top pedigrees, nor did they have awards to show from multiple competitions. They simply loved soaking up the heat of the morning sun, riding in the boat or walking across a field to start a hunt. They might nose through your gear bag hoping to find food scraps, and may not have been

in the biggest rush to work, but they loved being afield and more importantly, being with their master. Their eyes, demeanor and wagging tail left no doubt about that. I hunted with a few dogs that were simply outstanding. Well trained, driven, GUN DOGGIN’ 101 could mark multiple ducks dropped from By Scott Haugen a flock, would rapidly quarter a section of land to gain the scent of a quail covey – and kept up that pace all morning long. These dogs also had a love of being with their master and doing what they’re bred to do. A few hunters would apologize before the hunt even began about faults their dog had, which we’d likely see displayed. I didn’t mind, and when it did happen, I

offered help to correct the problem. While midseason corrections can be tough, now that bird seasons are over, it’s the perfect time to give your dog a tuneup. Most of the concerns owners had were very simple fixes, like getting a dog to sit, stay and heal.

If your dog doesn’t hunt well with others, train with another dog. If your dog breaks at a shot, hold the dog while someone else shoots a gun at a distance, or fires a training dummy launcher, then release your dog. If your dog doesn’t hold a point as you approach, get that check cord out. If your dog doesn’t sit, go back to how you taught it to sit as a pup; it’ll remember.

The list of fixes goes on, and only you know what those are. Rest assured, there’s a remedy for everything; you just have to be disciplined to reteach the dog.

THE BEST DOGS I hunted with this season – and there were two or three that stand out – had very good relationships with their owners. They were constantly looking into their master’s eyes, trying to anticipate

Author Scott Haugen enjoyed a fun morning hunt with his pudelpointers Echo (left) and Kona, who worked well together to put up multiple coveys of valley quail. Hunting with hardworking, well-disciplined dogs is the reward of dedicated training. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

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their next command so they could please them. The dogs trained with hand signals appeared most eager to please, always looking for directions so they could achieve the task at hand, then get back to hunting.

Verbal communication was very limited with these folks, too. They all used an e-collar, not for shocking, but for delivering beeps to communicate with their dog at a distance. I run e-collars on both of my dogs. One beep means to stop and look to me for direction; two beeps mean come

If you plan on hunting with two dogs, training with two dogs will alleviate a lot of potential problems and optimize your dogs’ performance. If you have only one dog, make it a point to train with a buddy and their dog. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

back toward me (usually so I can stop them with one beep and deliver a hand signal because they were off track); and continuous beeps mean it’s an emergency (like they’re about to cross a road) and to get back to me as fast as possible. Dogs that are trained with hand signals, heavy eye contact and minimal verbal commands are simply a joy to hunt with.

With spring here and summer fast approaching, now is the time to tune up your dog so it hunts, performs and behaves how you envision. Keep training sessions fun and short, as you want the dog to enjoy the experience and keep wanting more. Before you know it, your dog will be doing what you want it to do. Then the next hunting season can’t get here soon enough. NS

Editor’s note: Scott Haugen is a full-time writer. See his puppy training videos and learn more about his many books at scotthaugen.com and follow him on Instagram and Facebook.