yeah breakfast was great! The gang and I went back out for about 30 minutes this morning, that was until the feezing rain. Looking forward to a week of choice foraging, the end of this cold snap, and a slow migration north as the the seasons progress. The morels 'advance' through the seasons in a northerly direction by about 100 miles per week. I figure then if I can make about 20 bucks a week selling them on the roadside, I'll have money for gas, to buy some rice and eggs and maybe some meat (I'm not going to push the hunting regulations as much as I have been pushing fishing ones), with a few dollars left over to buy some leather tailings from leatherworkers and make more medicine bags and dreamcatchers. It's a small way to live, but it's a great way.

Tony

Check your state/s regulations for open season animals to hunt.  Down here, we have open season on Axis deer and Blackbuck, which are exotics.  There is also open season on "varmints" a variety of small and predatory animals, limited to one per day for furbearers.

I found the hunting guidelines and regulations on the Indiana DNR Web site:

http://www.in.gov/dnr/fishwild/huntguide1/HATG_0607/HATG0607_1-19.pdf

I'm sure this can be done for any state. In my research, hunting out of state is prohibitively expensive and appear to me to be only appealing to game hunting, not people trying to create value through their hunting experience. I would suggest people focus in on the local hunting culture and find within in it a place for yourself. A lot of hunters interested in food can teach you a lot, like how to process your own deer, help you become understanding of the cultures within the animal communities and huntings effects on those cultures.  

also, I just recently ran into an amazing survey of the economics, ecology, and outlook of the western mushroom hunting:

http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/publications/gtr710/ 

also, I wanted to point out that morels grow exceptionally well on the edges of fire-ravaged forest, some well that when yellowstone burned a while back, they had to issue special mushroom hunting permits...

 These are all the major fires from last year, this this years hot morel hunting spots:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2006/fire06.html

look in moist woods, look on fallen and dead and even 'stressed' trees. take a picture, and I should be able to tell you what it is, and if you can eat it or not.It's an easy way I can give support!  Morels have passed for you, and summer mushrooms, like agaricus and oyster will start to spring up after humid or rainy days.

Sorry it's so blurry. What is this stuff?

Take Care.

Went out on a little hunting trip this morning, brought home these beauties:

there turned out to be seven fruitbodies in the area with the ostrich ferns (whose fiddle heads are delicious!) juga flowers, violets, and grasses. We found them in association with Ash trees on a south-facing slope in a moist creekbed, covered in amoss and displaying many shades of green.

You can see a few morels got a little cold damage from the frost. The morels we found were a few inches larger than the morels we found on Friday the 13th. They were most likely survivors of the frost and the remnants of the first flush. We expect a second flush in this area during the current warming trend.

We found some more near a dying elm, and I though to take a picture of them right in the middle of cutting them:

Notice the Grey Morel on the left near the glass of water.

There were thirteen from this morning in all, and they tasted pretty good sauteed and folded into eggs from a farm we passed by on the way home.

I also found an old pictures of some dyed easter eggs. the yellow eggs were dyed with turmeric, the red ones with red onion skins, and the purple ones with grape juice.

Happy hunting everyone!