Tavis Lynch speaks to a crowd of roughly 30 people before they set off into a section of the Pelican River Forest north of Monico.
He lays out some of the ground rules before people start searching for mushrooms.
“This woods is huge. 70,000 acres, 109 square miles. If you get lost, that's where you live now,” said Chief Mycologist and Vice President of the Wisconsin Mycological Society Tavis Lynch.
This is just one of several groups headed out into the woods in Forest and Oneida Counties that are taking part in the annual Hiles Foray hosted by the Wisconsin Mycological Society.
It’s four days of searching and collecting mushrooms, learning to ID them, cooking with them, and cataloging everything they find.
Everyone breaks off into small groups, most carrying bags or baskets to bring back unique mushrooms for cataloging or ones good for cooking.
A group of about seven sticks with Lynch asking him to help identify the different mushrooms they spot. And there were a lot of varieties to identify.
In just this outing into this small section of the Pelican River Forest, more than 40 species of fungi were spotted, by the end of the weekend the Hiles Foray collected and cataloged more than 270 species.
“This is kind of the seam of one of the forest collisions, so our mushroom diversity here is way higher. I see species here that I don't see anywhere else in the state,” said Lynch.
Lynch says it wouldn't be unusual to find close to 400 species during the foray.
How many and what kind greatly depends on the weather, if the area is in a drought, how much recent rainfall there’s been.
All the data collected during the foray is made publicly available.
Lynch says it’s a great way to determine forest health and that mushrooms can be some of the first indicators of things like climate change impacting a forest.
“We've even seen some mushrooms that, traditionally, we would have said are not within our range that are suddenly in our range. So I think we're seeing the effects of that already,” said Lynch. “Fungi will be the flag, they're going to be the first thing that you'll see changes in. It takes a long time for trees to get established. It takes days for a mushroom to get established, sometimes hours. So we'll see these changes in the fungal world first.”
It’s one of the reasons Lynch says the work they do during the foray is so important. Cataloging all the different mushrooms they find each year gives a snapshot of the health of the forest and looking back at all the data can show how it’s changed.
“We catalog everything. We will do soil samples, just for soil type, we're not testing for anything else. Then I've already done a survey of all the trees present, so we know what the dominant mushroom hosting trees and non-mushroom hosting trees are. Everything gets written down. And that information is public,” said Lynch.
Typically, the Hiles Foray is done in the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest. Because of a permit issue this year, the group went out into the Pelican River Forest, which just recently allowed mushroom foraging since new easements were put in place.
There are people with mushroom knowledge of all levels taking part in the foray.
Jeremy Hooper from Milwaukee has been part of the Wisconsin Mycological Society for about six years now.
He first became interested in mushrooms after seeing some morels pop up in the mulch in his yard.
“I cooked them up and ate one, turned my back and the dog ate the rest,” Hooper said with a laugh. “But since then, it's been sort of a rabbit hole. I've just learned so much going out with this group.”
This is Hooper’s 4th time coming to the Hiles Foray.
“I like that there are mycologists along that can help you figure out what things are. The thing about mushrooms is, the more I learned, it seems like the less I know,” he said. “Talking to people who've been doing it longer and are more knowledgeable, it's really helpful to learn more, so you can help pass that along to other people.”
For others like Laurie Hesch and Doris Moon, this is their first foray into mushroom foraging.
“I love nature, and I love mushrooms. I always hike going, ‘That's a cool mushroom. Oh, that's a cool mushroom. That's a cool mushroom.’ I just want to learn more about mushrooms,” said Hesch.
Five-year-old Zoey, her twin brother, and their older sister Lucy are the youngest ones on this outing.
They also happened to be some of the best at spotting the mushroom among the dead leaves and downed trees.
Despite being the youngest, they already have quite a knowledge base for mushrooms.
Seeing the little kids with this kind of knowledge is one of Lynch’s favorite parts of leading a mushroom foray.
“Hearing the little kids that know things, that's great, you know, so impressive. They just guessed another one right back there, or not guessed they knew what it was,” said Lynch.
Just about every state as well as parts of Canada and Mexico has at least one chapter of the North American Mycological Society that holds forays each year.
“Anywhere there's water, anywhere there's life, there's going to be some type of fungus. We wouldn't always recognize it as a classic toad stool shaped mushroom. But there's fungus there,” said Lynch.
And while you might be able to find mushrooms just about anywhere, Lynch’s favorite place to find them is in Hiles during the foray.
“It's a mushroom haven. It's a mushroom mecca,” said Lynch.
The Wisconsin Mycological Society holds multiple forays each year in different parts of the state.
