{"id":5183,"date":"2019-05-11T08:23:52","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T15:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sbbch.org\/?p=5183"},"modified":"2025-04-26T16:31:21","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T22:31:21","slug":"its-peak-morel-mushroom-season-in-idaho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/?p=5183","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s peak morel mushroom season in Idaho"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY NICOLE BLANCHARD
\n\"\"<\/a>Morels<\/a><\/strong> are prized by professional chefs and amateur foodies alike for their nutty, earthy flavor. The truffle-like fungi can fetch prices upward of $20 per pound due to their scarcity and short growing season.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s an obvious element to the vagueness with which morel hunters share their finds \u2014 no one wants to find their favorite spot picked clean or otherwise disturbed. But the morels themselves are, by nature, a little perplexing, and that adds to the secretive culture around finding them.<\/p>\n

Morels are notoriously difficult to cultivate, and the vast majority of each yearly crop is collected in the wild. But where exactly those wild mushrooms will pop up is largely a guessing game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s sort of the fun (of morel hunting), it\u2019s an enigma,\u201d said Jonathan Oppenheimer, an avid morel hunter who works as the government relations director for the Idaho Conservation League.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s different than huckleberries, where you have your spot and you know they\u2019ll be there year after year after year,\u201d Oppenheimer said.<\/p>\n

Instead, morels tend to follow wildfires, cropping up in larger numbers in areas that burned the previous summer. But no one really knows why.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018big game\u2019 in Idaho and the West is in burned areas,\u201d Oppenheimer said.<\/p>\n

Coloradans Trent and Kristen Blizzard comb through wildfire data to offer a \u201cburn morel map\u201d of the West each year through their website, Modern Forager. A PDF of burned areas across 10 states where you\u2019re likely to find morels (including \u201cthe top 11 burns\u201d in Idaho) will run you $40.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause they only grow in recent forest fires, they are not such a secret location and we are able to share new maps every year,\u201d the Blizzards said in an email to the Statesman. \u201cThe real secret is to know what burn is the right one to go to \u2014 which we suss out in our book and maps for people. Finding the correct trees, elevations, aspects, etc. is the secret there \u2026 but, frankly, it is not rocket science!\u201d READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY NICOLE BLANCHARD Morels are prized by professional chefs and amateur foodies alike for their nutty, earthy flavor. The truffle-like fungi can fetch prices upward of $20 per pound due to their scarcity and short growing season. So there\u2019s an obvious element to the vagueness with which morel hunters share their finds \u2014 no one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-around-the-campfire","category-public-lands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5185,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5183\/revisions\/5185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}