Anthony Williams has a talent forfinding fickle fungi: he's afive-time morel mushroom hunting champion.
With the season for the delicacyhere, he wants to help you find them, too,but not at the grocery,where the mushroomscan fetch a premium of up to $65 per pound.
“If you want them to taste better, you have to pick them yourself,” Williamssaid.
The 70-year-old Boyne City resident has a lot of tips to share. He has been traipsing into the northern Michigan woods since he was a toddler in search of the mushrooms.
It was great prep work for his 5-year run as the king of morel pickers in the 1980s, after which organizers asked him to retire to give someone else a turn and help them by being a spokesperson. For the past 20 years Williamshas served as the “expert in residence” for that city'sNational Morel Festival, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year after a 2-year hiatus due to COVID-19.
The festival, he explains, got its start from a bar fight.
“A few guys were having too many beers and arguing over who the best morel picker was,” Williams said. “They go to the woods the next morning, shoot a gun and said 90 minutes to pick the most morels. And it’s the same rules today.”
About 150-300 people join the hunt yearlythe weekend after Mother’s Day — May 12-14 this year — pilinginto buses and heading to secret locations chosen by and known only to Williams, where they are then let out and given 90 minutes togather as many morels as they can.
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Participants run off in all directions, and every minute they are late in returning, they are docked 10 morels. Williams remembers the smallest winning run was about 225 morels.The biggest?850 morels.
“That was just an exceptional year,” he notes.
What is the secret to finding the mother lode of morels? Williams offers several tips:
- Start with the weather.Morel season goes about four weeks, but that can fall anywhere between April 1-June 1. What makes them sprout is a lot of rain and warmth, Williams explains.
- Don’t miss the trees for the forest.Head for the woods, and when you’re in there, look for poplar, ash, and/or aspen trees,which morels like to take root at the bases of.
- Keep moving, with your head up.“It’s a treasure hunt. The more ground you cover, the better,” Williams said. “Look 50 to 60 feet in front of you… You can look down and find them, but I get my head on a swivel, looking left to right.”
- When you spot one, slow down.Morels grow in groups, so when one is discovered, conduct a thorough search of the immediate area, and pinch them off at the base using your thumb and forefinger so you don't destroy the root system.
Morels can be hunted in less likely spots, too, Williams noted, including on beaches, in pine forests, in suburban lawns. But he maintainsthe most luck will be found with the above tips andalso advocates for getting as close to the 45th parallel as possible, which in Michigan you would cross on Interstate 75 as you pass through Gaylord.
If you’re not in the vicinity of the 45th, get out in the woods anyway and enjoy the fun in the hunt, even if you don’t find the fungi, and take the kids with you.
“Anything that takes you back to nature,” Williams said. “Respect for the planet comes from knowing the planet... You have to be dedicated. Just do it, and if you don’t find them, it's ok. You're in the woods with baby foxes, baby porcupines, trillium, the woods are coming to life, and it's a beautiful time to be out there. You did a good thing today, you took a walk in the woods."
If you do strike it rich with the morels, they will keep for a week in the fridge, but keep them in a paper bag and change it out daily, Williams adds.
When it comes time to cook them, he keeps it simple—tossing the mushrooms into a pan, boiling the moisture out over medium to low heat, throwing in a chunk of butter, then turning the heat way up before putting on a plate to enjoy.
Avoid the frustration of trying to grow a garden of morels this spring.
“It’s just about impossible to cultivate in our backyard, that’s part of the mystery,” he said, although one Novi man was lucky enough to find the mother lode in his after nearly a quarter century at his residence.“It’s a nature thing that can’t be replicated. You have to forage, you’re going back 10,000 years to when we were hunters and gatherers. When you hunt, you’re stepping back in time and finding treasure.”
Contact reporter Susan Bromley at sbromley@hometownlife.com or 517-281-2412. Follow her on Twitter @SusanBromley10.
