Four Easy Tips to Make Your Morel Hunting a Success in Minnesota

The buzz for morels has started in Minnesota.  Very soon, people are going to be walking through parks with bags and containers and trying to ditch you as they are on the hunt for those secret spots where morels grow.

It doesn't fit the "Minnesota Nice" quality but this is the reality of morel mushroom hunters - they aren't going to tell you where their secret spot is.  But, I've got a few tips so you can find one yourself.  And I'll even share my secret hunting spot!

My Secret Spot for Finding Morel Mushrooms in Rochester, Minnesota

I know that there are people who spend hours walking and hunting for morels.  After I tell you this, you are probably going to hate me.  Sorry, Mother Nature is just really nice to me when it comes to morel mushrooms.

Our family took a big step about 9 years ago.  We moved from the comforts of the North Park subdivision with gorgeous landscaping and an amazing deck, a home with beautiful, remodeled bathrooms, to a house where mice were in charge and there wasn't a nice bathroom anywhere.  Not joking.  The mice were everywhere and the master bathroom had a floor that was so rotted, we basically kept the door shut until we could get to that project.

I can tell that I've made it sound like a very inviting place that you want to visit.  Almost everything has been redone on the inside of the house and the mice are no longer allowed to visit.  We found a lot of surprises with this place but there was one more that I laughed out loud when I first saw it.

We have a few acres of land and most of it, from what we've been told, was covered in trees.  We still have quite a few, lots that are Elm, and quite a few that have fallen the last few years.  We also have every animal that you can imagine come visit us, well, other than a black bear.  I'm still waiting for that.  Coyotes have come right to our back door, turkeys and deer are regular visitors, weasels (didn't see them but they killed our chickens), opossums, ducks, geese, a crane, and lots and lots of frogs.  Springtime is basically a flood of frogs.  You can't step in the grass without seeing one.

I was walking through our backyard with the dogs a few years ago and as I was getting frustrated with some wild raspberries that kept popping up, I saw something weird on the ground poking through a few dead leaves.  Google is always there to help me and I learned that the pile of weird objections I found were morel mushrooms!

My secret spot:  my neighborhood.  Turns out, most of our neighborhood has morel mushrooms in our yards (I've even had them right next to my front steps of the house!) and we get buckets full of morel mushrooms every spring.

Am I going to tell you where I live?  Nope.  It's a secret.

How Do I Know If Morel Mushrooms Are Out Near Me?

If you'd like a little help finding a secret spot though, check thegreatmorel.com. Looks like someone on April 15th, 2024 spotted morel mushrooms in Pine Island.

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If you own a dog, right now in your yard are piles of squishy turds that have thawed out and you really don't want to scoop them up.  (If you enjoy this, please come to my house...I have a Saint Bernard.  #EnoughSaid). Picking up squishy dog poop is one of the things we truly hate doing in Minnesota.  And just like an infomercial...but wait, there's more!  Yeah, dog poop isn't the only thing we are hating on.  See the rest of the list below.

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