Take Nothing but Pictures?

I went a hunting for morels again. I did so a few times last spring with nothing to show for it. But I did my homework, I've read a couple of books, watched lots of YouTube instructional videos, pestered Facebook friends who post pictures of their mushroom hauls.

Even friended a guy on FB who appears to make it a career, hunting morels from Alabama to Canada as the season progresses. I want to apprentice myself to him but so far, no luck.

Which is one serious knock on morel hunters, they seem to hate apprentices. So I guess I'll have to learn for myself.

Corinna's step-dad has 80 acres, mostly wooded, near Freeman, Missouri. He said he found them all over the place this time last year so I went down with a mesh bag and high hopes.

He led me to the areas he found a lot last year after leading me to park my car where it wouldn't get stranded. I drove a Scion xB, his place might not require four wheel drive to access, but it'd be a bonus. Ground clearance is a must, and my xB could high center on a Pinewood Derby track.

He expressed surprise that I hadn't found any in the first half hour or so, then left to do errands on his own. I kept at it. Damnit, I wasn't leaving the woods until I'd found at least one morel.

God, please lead me to a whole stand of morels. Pretty please?

My phone didn't get any signal after I'd left Peculiar on the way to Greg's place so I had powered it off and left it in the car on arrival. So I wasn't sure how much time I'd spent slowly trolling the woods. I was trying to be thorough. I was looking for dead elms, dead trees in general, burned trees, fallen trees and so on. I found all that in spades.

I found lots of mushrooms. I might have found some chanterelles but I'm not certain. I found a whole stand of some kind of shroom, not sure if it was edible or not so I left it be. But morels?

Finally when my hips were aching and I realized I was getting shin splints from walking, I started to drift back to my car empty handed.

So that old environmentalist saw about leaving nothing but footprints and taking nothing but pictures? Yeah, that about sums up my latest mushroom hunt. It was nice being in the woods, very quiet, you can't even hear a highway at Greg's place, but I sure would have liked to take at least a skillet full of morels home with me.