Okay; So here you are. You've been hiking in the woods all day looking for a particular wild mushroom, but having little sucess. It's growing late in the day so you decide to call it quits and head back to your car. After walking several miles of rugged terrain you were looking forward to a nice dinner and a little relaxation. But, just when you get to within sight of your vehicle you spy a fallen tree that you passed hours before, and on the other side of this tree you catch a glimmer of white. "Oh no, can it be!" You exclaim to yourself. Carefully you work your way over to the other side of this fallen timber and there before your eyes lay hundreds of the largest and freshest oyster mushrooms that you've ever seen. Could this happen to you? Well if your lucky maybe it can. Oyster mushrooms are one of the most easily recognizable of our wild mushrooms. No other mushroom looks like it or smells like it, and it does fruit in large numbers. It's not unusual to gather 10 lbs or more on some occasions. The Oyster mushroom fruits at the beginng of summer weather and will continue to appear throughout the summer and into fall if moisture and humidity are right. I've even harvested them in November and had Oyster mushroom stuffing with my turkey dinner. Look for large to small white shelf-like mushrooms growing in groups on dead or dying trees, logs, buried roots and even mulch. They're soft to the touch and have a distinctive fishy aroma. The stem can be tough on larger specimens so remove it with your pocket knife. Take them home and fry them up!!! They're gooooooood!
