Howdy.

[brad boettcher]

Greetings. Addicted mushroom hunter from Northeast Illinois. New here just looking for some mushroom folk more experienced than myself. I've been hunting for three seasons now and have only consumed five species of mushrooms that I am very familiar with and are generally unmistakable anyways(though I am still quite careful). Those would be Hen of the Woods, Elm Oysters, Oyster mushrooms, and Puffballs. I didn't care for the Puffball but I shall try it again with some different recipes as I hear it's enjoyed by many people. I'm overloaded with Elm Oysters in my hunting spots and while not my favorite, I found recently that as an addition to hearty strongly flavored soups or stews they are truly excellent. Oysters don't seem to be all that common in my neck of the woods, but when I DO find them they have been massive! Found three pounds late season two years ago growing on a dead tree off the side of a country road, and just last weekend found five pounds on one small fallen tree. It was all but blanketed in them! Very delicious, my favorite mushroom so far. I slowly sauteed some of them in the oven in some butter and a liberal mix of curry seasonings and the flavors matched wonderfully I thought. This year I brought home 35-40lbs of Hens. It was a boomer year. Almost more than I could eat, freeze, dry, and pickle, but I worked hard and not a scrap has been wasted. I found some new places to hunt in an old-growth oak woods and I am finding pile after pile after pile of decomposing hens now. If I had been hunting these spots earlier in the season I bet I would have 100+ pounds. The ones i pickled I did with a splash of apple cider vinegar in addition to the white and added 1 large garlic clove halved, some wild picked Goldenrod flowers, just a couple pinches of McCormick Pickling spice, some good strong fresh parsley sprigs, and just a small piece of lime rind. Fantastic! I have yet to find a morel in my area(not for lack of trying) and it is my great shame. I'll be out next year trying again though.

I'd like to start gathering and consuming more species and while I always have my Auduban Field Guide and use the internet exhaustively as a supplement to it, I definitely get uneasy about gilled mushrooms that grow in soil and grasses. I recently found a large patch of what I was sure were Tricholoma atrosquamosum(Dark Scaly Knight), but the only thing that didn't match up was that these did not have a down turned outer edge. Now most the pictures themselves of these mushrooms that I was able to find to me DID NOT SHOW a down turned outer lip, but the literature itself said they should so I did not bother picking more than the one I used for Identification. They did appear very mature(possibly over so) so maybe that was why. 

Sorry this has gotten long just thinking out loud(with my fingers). 

I'm quite the photographer of mushrooms growing wild in their environment so I'll be sharing anything interesting or striking here that I get good pictures of. 

Thanks to the creators for this site.

[troutddicted]

Welcome - enjoyed the intro and lets see some pics - we love mushrooms pics over here