Odds and ends Mushrooming etc.

Mushroom Mayhem

In general, the danger of wild mushroom eating is over hyped. Like many things in the woods, we fear the extremely unlikely form of acquiring an injury over the much more statistically common ways of getting hurt in the woods (say, Bigfoot or mountain lions over stray dogs, bees and ourselves). Not that it is all bad, sometimes a myth goes a long way to protecting a resource that would be otherwise depleted. I once watched a naturalist show some folks a mushroom growing in a wild tree was edible, the next day all the mushrooms were cut out of the trees…with a saw! This eliminated the ability to show other folks that useful wood snippet, as naturalists are prone to do.

The fact remains though that there are mushrooms out there which can be mistaken for edible ones that can kill you. I’ve enjoyed several dozen types of wild mushrooms without so much as a stomach ache and never came close to even having a scare of stumbling accidently into eating something poisonous…until now.

It is no coincidence that this blip in my mycological mastery…er, luck, occurred when my in-laws arrived in town…just in time to be thrown under the bus. Autumn happens to be one of the prime times to harvest some excellent mushrooms. One in particular that I covet is the honey mushroom, (also known as “papinkys”, “pinkys” or “stumpys” and is known to those who speak Latin as, “armillaria mellea”. I’ve eaten large quantities of stumpys in the past but have never found them myself. Friends of mine would bring them up here to trade at deer camp for deer spots and umm, okay, gold. Every fall, when I knew they were up, I’d take exhaustive walks in likely places searching for these delicious additions to fall meals, without any luck. I passed over other great mushrooms on my walk just to save bag space in case I found some stumpys. They are great on steak and stuffed in grouse, they’re fantastic on pork chops or in spaghetti sauce, they’ve even been known to make tar covered plywood taste good. I must admit though, they did little to help on carp.

Now, the guys I’ve known who pick honey mushrooms are not exactly the technical science kind of guys. They go out with a bag, drink a few things, smoke cigars and barely pay attention to crossing roads in traffic beyond worrying about poisonous mushrooms. Therefore, I figured honey’s must be a low risk mushroom like one of the “Fab Five” that won’t kill you and look like nothing else; morels, sulfur shelves, shag’s, bolets and puffballs. Upon further review, none of those fit the description of honey mushrooms…and guys that drink, walk in traffic and smoke cigars should not be considered “low riskers”.

Once again, this fall I hit my likely places list here in Cameron searching for honeys. Once again, I struck out and now pick the choice ones I find all but giving up hope. Then, one recent afternoon I took my dog Delta on a walk/ “training” exercise and at one point, while trying to chase down a bird for Delta to shoot, I looked down and LOW AND BEHOLD, HONEY MUSHROOMS!!! Even though I’ve never picked them, I’ve eaten them and despite that they weren’t stewing in butter, smothering a steak or falling out of a grouse nor was there smoke and BS hunting stories flying. Yet, I recognized them instantly. After all these years, there they were, naked honeys surrounded the base of a tree. I dropped to my knees and thanked the Lord. Then, being the slightly more technical type than some of my buddies, I only picked a few then quickly walked, okay, skipped back home, burst into the house and exclaimed that I had found manna from heaven. Excitedly, I told the story of the wonders of these mushrooms to my family and in-law family who also became excited. I did caution them that this being a “new” mushroom to pick I’d better double check their status before we did anything drastic. I also announced that I was, “99%” sure that I had what I thought I had. Inwardly, I was thinking to identify them would only be a formality. The one percent un-sureness didn’t stop me from dropping a few in a frying pan as I got my books out.

Now most mushrooms can be sorted out fairly quickly. There is usually something very specific about a mushroom that locks it into a specific category. As I reviewed the mushroom books for this, I didn’t find such a thing. Pinkys can grow on stumps, live trees, dead trees, in the ground, under deciduous trees and under conifer trees and apparently on nuclear reactors, too. To make matters worse, as I read through the manuals which indicated that identifying features include a lot of “or” for specific descriptions. The colors could be pink or brown or yellow…to narrow it down. The gill attachment to the stalk is one of the worst to identify. Usually gills are attached or unattached (free) and it easy to tell them apart. However, there are the grey areas between attached notched, attached adnexed or seceding which to determine takes time, patience, a microscope and something called a “PhD”.

As I sorted through all of these mushroom lack of identification features, my 99% fell quickly to a reassuring 50-50. Complicating matters was that among sorting things out and conflicting pictures of “honey mushrooms” was the little note at the base of their description, ‘…edibility, Choice…with caution; this mushroom should only be collected by an expert (unfortunately, I rate myself as fairly good), a very variable mushroom with deadly look alikes’, and so forth it went. Not to mention identifying some extremely similar mushrooms that grow at the same time, in the same places and will kill a human dead. References also stated that even the honey mushroom itself is mildly poisonous to some people while others can eat it with impunity…meanwhile the mushrooms were nicely sautéing in the kitchen, I ran in to take them off the stove. The only way to tell for sure if they were honey mushrooms was to conduct a spore print which would take a few hours. As I came in, my mother-in-law, who bless her heart, apparently thinks I’m an “expert” was eating the mushrooms! She commented that they were very good…it’s nice to know some poisons are yummy. I had to act fast, it was time to take decisive action I reached into the pan grabbed a mushroom and…I ate one, too. How that was supposed to help…I have no idea. Then I looked up the poisons listed in the poisonous ones hoping for some good news. What I found was, it takes about twenty hours for the effects to be felt. The effects include severe pain as you poop yourself to death. At some point it appears to doctors (assuming you made it to the doctor) that you’re cured, then you go home have a gory relapse and die. It took a while to find a silvery lining in all of that.

The good news was that the spore print of the honey mushroom and not any of its look alike is snowy white. I set some caps on newspaper, closed them in a bag and left them for a few hours. I went to the Red Raider high school football game, where my stomach grumbled and rumbled through all four quarters (which occurs when eating bad mushrooms OR watching a half dozen turnovers committed by your favorite team, the jury is still out).

All is well that ends well. We got home from the game and found beautiful snowy white spoor prints on the newspapers. I went out and picked a bunch more and we made it through the weekend without incident. I’ve got my honey spot and I’m not sure if I’ll be eating my buddies mushrooms any more at camp…stray dogs, bees and myself…

See you along the stream

The Great Squirrel Migration 2

No one knows why great squirrel migrations occur and many don’t believe they are even a real event. I’ve never seen one but I trust a few of the sources that claim to have. I’ve written about them before and since then have spent hours sitting in the woods during the winter (the best time) waiting for one to occur. I offered them free stuff that they’ll have to pay for anyway and at their own peril but they still haven’t come (but I hear they voted for me three times). I tried to drive them out of their nests and I tried just sitting quietly watching. All I saw was a giant hairy man with huge feet meeting with some little green men in the woods. I admit that for that one, I had been drinking a lot of whiskey while helping a friend in a sugar shack. Anyone can see stuff like that under those circumstances. The point is that EVEN THEN, I failed to see a great squirrel migration.

I know migrations occur. I witnessed a great buck migration occur once and during archery season to boot. Being easily impressed and distracted, I never got a shot off even though I was yards from the thundering herd which ran right by me. The large number of bucks reminded me of a buffalo stampede in the old west. They even turned together, in unison, like a great herd as they navigated obstacles while bounding away.

Once I saw a great number of squirrel tracks bounding through the snow which was possibly sign of a great migration, the tracks only stopping to gravely damage my own sugar sap lines. Since then it has been quiet about this phenomenon but recently the Pennsylvania Game News had an article in which a writer confessed to witnessing a squirrel migration. That was very interesting but also depressing to me because once it is recognized by the State that means I am officially behind the power curve. Time to move on, I’ll probably see a migration every day now.

Yet no one knows why they are migrating or where they are going. Squirrels mate two times a year- from December through January then again from June through July. That leaves out weather conditions and light and food and access to alcohol as reasons why squirrels mate when they do. If squirrel mating occurs without rhyme or reason; how the heck are we going to figure out why they migrate? Of course squirrels are probably trying to figure out why we do what we do. Maybe they are all running to see a human in the woods. Word spreads among them at the nut bar (they got ‘em, too) and they all head down to a good viewing tree just to watch and say, “Why the heck do they do that?” To which we can’t even tell the squirrels why we are doing what we are doing.

I can prove it. Scientists are among the brightest of human minds and they have recently figured out how to make light actually slow down and travel at a rate slower than the speed of light. When asked why they did it and what it could be used for they basically indicated, “I don’t know and nuthin’”. (Actually, they said they just wanted to test a theory and there was no current application but perhaps it could be used to make some astronomical measuring equipment more accurate in the future.) Scientifically that translates to “we don’t even know why we did it other than to see if we could”. If we don’t even know why we do things and our brightest don’t know why they do things; how are we going to figure out squirrels? Amazingly, we will be expecting squirrels to know though. I wouldn’t be shocked if there will be a grant for our scientists to study it even though no one will know why we need to know it, including the scientists. I take that back, they may study it with a predisposition to say the cause is climate change.

Nationwide, our wildlife agencies, staffed with scientists, don’t even know how or why to get people to do things, like follow rules, understand the current management or even continue to enjoy hunting and fishing enough to purchase licenses in ever greater numbers. Even though they think they like to change, they really just double down on failed policies which are merely not real change but just adding to a previous policy which is the same as the previous change to produce a new result but instead get the same result (I think probably because it is more of the same but that’s just me). For example, they make announced Saturday lake trout stockings and sales go down, then they announced weekday stream trout stockings and sales go down, now announced early season special trout stockings expecting a different result. Or the constant expanding of special hunting seasons before the traditional rifle season. Those are examples of doubling and tripling down on the same changes without results done in Pennsylvania the last fifteen years. The heck with figuring out squirrels- I’d like to figure out the people who are trying to figure out other people.

See you along the stream

DARN KNOTS

Early on in my life, thanks to my hunting and fishing days, I thought I knew some knots, enough to get by anyway. After all, I tied two perfectly good knots to my feet each morning. If the thought of knots affecting my social standing passed through my mind, I would wave it off thinking, “Who is shallow enough to judge a man by how he ties off the running end of a line?” When I hunted from a stand my usual replica of “Gideon’s Knot” on both ends got my rifle or bow safely into the tree with me, as far as knots were concerned, I thought I was ready for life. Then, not long after enjoying such bliss, I left my usual summer work on cattle farms to take work on a tree farm/nursery to expand my horizons and get two more bucks an hour.

On the cattle farms tying knots was a simple affair; need to get the hay elevator to stay close to the mow? Using a dozen half hitches there referred to professionally as “do-hickies”, did just fine. There was another farm hand that would get all serious about his knots. His knots, which had all kinds of good names but sometimes became untied in bad moments, earned him the nickname “Darn Knots”. We didn’t care who tied it or what it looked like, as long as the elevator stayed connected to the barn, everyone was happy. I strolled into my new job at the tree farm, unsuspecting the importance of making a “good” knot.

One of my first tasks was to tie burlap around the root balls of trees for transport, certainly not as crucial a knot task as holding a hay elevator. The owner, while showing me the ropes of the job asked, “Can you tie a good knot?” “Sure can,” I confidently replied. Then he set me to it and told me he would be back in a little while to check my work. When he came back the boss seemed very pleased with my handiwork. “Great, you tied these off with square knots!” he exclaimed. “Did you do that on purpose?” I honestly answered, “Sure, I did it on purpose.” I mean I wasn’t sure what a square knot was, “Ol’ Darn” never threw that name out, but those knots didn’t get on the root ball by accident. If my boss wanted to call them square knots that was fine by me. “Well, that is nice work, indeed.” The boss beamed. I could see my stock was going up tremendously, I envisioned that I would be chief root ball wrapper in no time.

The next day, I was given the task to tie up some more root balls and I went at it with the vigor of a man using his new found talents. But when the boss came to check my work this time, he was not pleased. This time he spoke as if I just girdled all his prize trees, “What is this mess?” he exclaimed. I was stumped. I had done the same thing as before so I replied, “It’s just my square knots.” “These are not square knots these are granny knots and they will not do. I can’t have our customers seeing our trees tied up with granny knots.” Little did I know at the time what a difference one cross over instead of under could make in the quality of a knot, and of course, I had no idea a cross over vs. a cross under could cause the catastrophic release of root balls as well as the reputation of an entire nursery! To think I had trusted my Remington and Hoyt to such a knot.

Before it was all said and done I learned many good things from my boss at the nursery including several good knots. There are thousands of wonderful and beautiful knots that can be tied with a good piece of rope, unfortunately, I only suspect they exist. Now and again I still like to fall back into the “triple doohickey” for old time’s sake. I also enjoy watching sportsmen scramble up the proverbial social rope ladder when it is time to have something tied around camp. Tie your tent off the wrong way out West and be labeled as a “green horn, tender foot” the rest of the trip. Tying a boat off? Stand back or the options thrown out to argue over could tie up time for hours. If you do get in the mood to knock the rust off and tie the trusty triple granny and get caught, there is a way out. When your buddy scowls at your “string of beauty” and asks, “What is this mess?” Give him, “It’s a triple munther with two half hitches. SEALS use it to tie explosives to enemy battleships.” Chances are, your buddy will pat the knot and say, “Yeah, that’s what I thought, an oldie but a goody.” Just beware, if you don’t fess up, you might get asked to tie off the pack horse, a “diamond hitch”, or worse yet, your own rappel line. Don’t use a “West Point Special”. If you act like you know your knots too often, your last words could be “DARN KNOTS!”

See you along the stream.