Sarley: The morel of the story? Time is running out for picking this local delicacy

Another season is biting the dust.

The best season for avid morel mushroom hunters is coming to a close. Our crazy Northern Illinois weather patterns have blessed the morel hunting community with what may have been the best mushroom collecting recently.

These hard-to-find fungi make an appearance every year for anywhere from two weeks to a little over a month. You may ask why these morels are in such demand. They are incredibly delicious. My friend the late Tom Nauman, a certified morel expert, said, “Comparing morel mushrooms to store-bought button mushrooms is like comparing filet mignon to cheap hamburger.” I think he was right.

How good are they? Call yourself lucky if you find any at a farmers market for $50 to $60 a pound. Yes, they are that good. You can buy them by the ounce in dehydrated form, but they don’t taste like the fresh ones and they will set you back about $10 an ounce. Yes, I said ounce.

Morels cannot be farmed, they can only be picked wild, just like wild rice. Part of the high price tag can be justified by the scarceness and elusiveness. It takes a lot of work to hunt down a decent stash of these beauties.

If you ask a morel aficionado for a good spot to pick them, a blank stare, a head shake and no verbal response is considered a polite answer. A derisive laugh and “not over my dead body” is more than likely the response you’ll receive.

The first friends I asked to take me morel hunting told me that if I wanted to go with them, I’d have to be blindfolded as soon as I got in the car to leave their house. I laughed hard when I heard that. They didn’t laugh. They were totally serious.

I think this may be the last weekend you’ll be able to find any wild morels to pick for yourself this year. They’ve been popping up in big numbers since the first week of the month. Historically, Mother’s Day is considered a prime time. Mushroom hunters will tell you that they appear when the forsythias begin to bloom. They more accurately appear when the ground soil reaches a certain temperature.

General rules tell you that morels grow in a 10-foot diameter from the base of a dead elm tree. You should focus on elms that have died and have not yet lost their bark or fallen down. The south side of trees is best, as are trees that are on sloping, rather than flat ground.

The best times are in warm weather and should occur a day or two after a rain, causing damp ground, not swampy ground. A lot of rain or a stretch of hot weather are things that will shorten the morel season. We recently had a season that disappeared after the second weekend.

My buddy Mike Miller from Lake in the Hills is my main morel guru. He’s taught me most of what I know about the elusive creatures. Miller has a freaky ability to find them in the woods.

I took my daughter Michelle out for some morel scavenging. I could not believe how into it she is. We found a decent amount of morels, but guess what? They were around an elm that had died and fallen over and all of its bark was gone. The ground was flat and the morels were on the north side. Everything was wrong, totally wrong.

It taught me a lesson. Not everything operates according to the rules. Every single morel we picked was found in the wrong place. Morel mushroom hunting is a lot like fishing, I guess.

• Daily Herald Outdoors columnist Steve Sarley can be reached at sarfishing@yahoo.com.