Mushroom Hunting Great Success

The prices vary, and since the gangs have really increased commercial harvest, the prices have plunged of late. This may presage increasing disinterest by such profit focused parties going forward, at least that's my hope. I rarely sell mushrooms, but eat all I can, preserving many for when they aren't in season, and give a lot away.

To harvest them commercially, there's a bunch of paperwork and regulations that do not apply to individuals foraging for personal use, which is fine with me as I am not particularly interested in managing quantities of money that attract larcenous avarice. My quality of life has increased dramatically since I have discovered how to manage my affairs with very little money.

Barter is untaxable, and most people don't realize how much of their life is drained away by taxes alone. Up to half your work is caused by taxation if you use money as the primary means of trading for the goods and services necessary. As decentralization burgeons, I expect more and more folks to discover that less and less of the things they require need to be bought with money, and also how that dramatically improves their quality of life.

Mushroom sales are taxable. I'm not picking mushrooms so I can pay for the murder of brown people all over the world. I sleep a lot better at night avoiding such liabilities.

I usually pick mushrooms as I am hunting, and being armed tends to incite anxiety in the guards. I was unarmed yesterday, and didn't run into any gangs. I agree it was good to be free of them =)

I once saw a Garter Snake trying to eat a smaller Leopard Slug, and the copious mucus produced by the slug almost killed the snake. As a defense mechanism against predators with no hands to pull the sticky slugs out of their throats, that slime is pretty useful. Slugs will eat dead things, so the hunter had become the hunted, but managed to spit out the slug and slither away. Absolutely amazing!

In Oz there is a similar mollusc that is singularly colored, the Pink Slug. About the same size but hot pink. Life is amazing =) I am told Lion's mane can be found locally, and I look, but have never seen it. Perhaps it associates with species other than the primary Spruce, Hemlock, and Douglas Fir I tend to hunt and haunt. Along the river draws there are higher concentrations of hardwoods like Cottonwood and Bigleaf Maple, but that tends to be nasty thickets here in the rainforest, and I ramble in steeper, but less tangled forests as a rule.

I am confident that NZ has a bounty of native mushrooms, and tramping about innawoods might do you some good. I know it does me. I tried living in cities, in deserts, and on frozen tundras, but the deep woods is home.

Once I realized what the ethnically pure groups of armed men shouting excitedly at me while I was hunting were, I changed my venues for hunting, and avoid areas where they have productive patches to harvest. It took a while, since I couldn't understand a word of Vietmanese, Cambodian, or Russian, and they seemed to not be interested in speaking English. I suppose they didn't need to in order to chase people away, as brandishing AK-47s gets the message across.

I first thought they were guarding marijuana grows, or methlabs in the forests, but learned of their mercenary mushrooming from buyers who kindly let me know not to harass their suppliers if I wanted to keep selling to them. I didn't, so don't, and pick shrooms elsewhere now. I hear Russians claim the area I was in yesterday and saw a cluster of tents that I widely skirted around. I also only found the one King Bolete, which was in a pretty hidden copse they must have missed in their morning harvests.

I might look further up the coast and farther from the village, where the costs and difficulties of running picking gangs might make the Ceps and Matsutakes less than profitable for their effort. I also haven't run into armed gangs since the prices of Matsutakes dropped, and don't think Ceps bring a high enough price to justify the risk of brushfire wars with competing gangs.

I also have no interest in commercial quantities of mushrooms, and a kilo or two of a given species satisfies my needs for the year. I can forage peacefully in areas they have no interest in with complete success, so I try to do that. I learned a long time ago that just because some people are assholes doesn't mean I have to butt heads with them. Other assholes can do that just fine, while I leave them to it.

I am a big fan of life, and quite fond of fungi for many reasons. They do some amazing things, and some of them are very tasty.

Some scientists have remarked that the unique genetic structure of some fungi seem to indicate an extraterrestrial origin. I dunno about that, but 'Omnivore' was one of my favorite books growing up. If I see a mushroom hopping about on one leg and peering at me voraciously with it's solitary eye, I will be sure to see if I have mixed my mushroom harvest up with LBMs on accident, rather than suspect alien fungal assault, however.

Mushrooms and I have an equitable arrangement: they want their spores spread and fertilized, and I want to make fertilizer out their delicious and sporulant fruiting bodies. Some folks consider predation a savage and one-sided affair, but it's mutually profitable for concerned parties at the species level. In this vein, I note the huge increase in population of species most amenable to domestication and consumption by H. sapiens.

Predators are essential to the prosperity of their prey, and most folks are unaware of this. As intelligent predators on all three kingdoms of living things, plants, animals, and fungi, we have potential ability to bless those species we find tasty with vastly increased population. Sadly, we have too often been merely mercenary in that act, and our rational capacity to deliver blessings to our prey has far to go before I would consider it truly beneficial.

At least by hunting and foraging wild foods I am certain of my beneficence towards the species on which I prey. I fulfill a natural role, and also a societal duty towards our environment, as I will defend to the death those environments on which I so enjoy depending, and the species that live there. After all my quality of life is utterly dependent on them, so they had better be able to depend on me in turn.

I seem to recall you are from Germany? I bet Chanterelles, Fly Agaric, and Boletes grow there too. I know the latter two species do, and I am pretty sure Chanterelles do too. I have read a lot of folks pick Morels, and various other species in Europe and Asia that I am less familiar with. I know there are mushrooms worthy of the most exacting gourmand there, and so I am sure there are people that pick them there too.

I found a mycologist locally that I would bring samples to that I though might be good ones from what I read and saw in field guides. That was what really got me started, but after I was out innawoods picking I ran across others that were foraging, and went from there.

There must be universities, clubs, or buyers of wild mushrooms where you are. If you get a good field guide, like Peterson's or Audubon's, and wander around innawoods, you will find things that look likely to take to experts to ask about. I was wandering innawoods anyway, so it was a sort of natural addition to hunting.

Nothing quite like Stag sirloin in Jack Daniel's sauce with fresh Chanterelles over a campfire on Elk Mountain to encourage one to continue =) I was sold for life on the spot. Dinner tonite was Chanterelles sauteed in brown sugar bacon and onions over pasta with a cheese and tomato sauce. Sure sounds better than mac and cheese with mushrooms and ketchup.

Tastes better too.

It's the Oregon coast range. It is damp (raining all day today) which is good for trees - and mushrooms!