Lori Carris crept through the forest, knife in hand, searching the ground for her tiny prey. Lori Carris crept through the forest, knife in hand, searching the ground for her tiny prey. Spotting it, she dropped to one knee and slashed with the knife. Lori is the mushroom queen,'' said an admiring Jack Rogers, a fellow mushroom hunter in the Thatuna Hills, near Moscow.
Spring means the start of the month-long morel mushroom season in Northwest forests.
Amateur and commercial pickers scour the forests, looking for the spongy fungus whose nutty taste is a complement to steaks, pizza and eggs. Last year's big wildfires that burned 6 million acres in the West are expected to produce a bumper crop of morels because mushrooms thrive in recent burns. But a cold spring and drought in the Pacific Northwest have delayed the emergence of wild mushrooms from the ground. Hunting for wild mushrooms is a hobby, much like hunting, fishing or stamp collecting. Organized clubs in many cities stage weekend '' forays'' into the woods where prized locations are jealously guarded.