May. There is a fall season in October. The Spokane Mushroom Club in Washington just celebrated its 35th birthday. More than 100 members regularly foray into the woods in search of mushrooms, President David Jones said. Mushroom hunters are aided by the U.S. Forest Service, which provides maps of recently burned areas to locate the best potential sites. It's unclear exactly why morels thrive in burned portions of forests, but there is no question that is where the best pickings are.
Morels can grow in much of the nation, except for the coastal plains of the Southeast.
Recreational harvesters pick them in the East and Midwest, while commercial picking primarily occurs in the huge forests of the West, where mushrooms can be concentrated enough to justify hiring pickers. Specialty fungi are still a small part of overall mushroom sales in America, but they are growing, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But for many people, mushroom hunting is more about having a good time in nature. On a recent sunny weekday, Rogers and Carris searched along a logging road just north of the town of Deary in the Idaho Panhandle. Both are plant pathologists, but this trip was for pleasure as much as business.