I am in love with morel mushroom hunting.
A wild edible mushroom that looks like a sponge & tastes like filet mignon.
The rich, nutty & earthy flavor is undeniable! Every good chef in the world would love to get their hands on a good steady supply of Morel Mushrooms, but at $40- $80 per pound very few top notch restaurants can afford it.

What started as a hobby, has turned into passion & now the word “Passion” is too small to describe this. Could it be obsession? Uhhh, yes – the Morel Madness is sweeping the Nation every spring. People from all over grab a mesh sack, a walking stick, a compass & a knife & head for the woods to check their favorite honey hole, see what kind of morel crop they can pick this year. Some people just enjoy a walk in the woods and only have a few spots to check, while others take it to the next level and travel with the morel season from South where they appear first, to up North. I will admit.. I am one of those people.

I started mushroom hunting in Kiev, Ukraine, where I was born and raised. After the big nuclear disaster at Chyrnoble, my parents started to file paperwork to move to the United States. Five years later we were finally granted permission to come over after we sold everything & literally invested all of our life savings into moving here ( its not easy to get out of former USSR. ) We came to Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1991 where we settled in nicely in a pleasant, laid back, cozy town .. the opposite of the hectic life style we were used to in USSR.

I first heard about morel mushrooms in 2001 from a buddy at a factory, who took me out for the first time & taught me a little about how to find them. I quickly remembered how much I missed mushroom hunting from the Russian forests & that is where it all started.

My first year I only found 16 morels. Some days I would drive all over, hunt in every woods I could locate & only find 1 or 2 little morels, take them home treating them like gold nuggets. I’d slice them in half, carefully rinse & saute them up in butter, sit down in the most comfortable chair in the house & taste every mili ounce of natures wonder. Its when I tasted my first morel & the flavor exploded in my taste buds only making me crave more. That combination of hunting for them & enjoying their flavor had me hooked for life!
In 2005 I decided that the 2 or 3 week-long season was not good enough, too short for my craving to be filled! So that’s when I decided to start my hunting in North Carolina, going up through Tennessee, Kentucky and Southern Indiana. Then I found out about the biggest Morel Mushroom Tournament in Illinois. It drew 527 competitors from all over the U.S.
I entered & won the Grand Championship by picking 110 morels in 2 hours’ time in the same woods with 526 other morel maniacs just like me! lol. Two weeks later I entered another Morel Hunting Tournament in Boyne City, Michigan. Out of 250 competitors I respectfully took 3rd place. I gathered 89 pounds of morels that year by covering 7 states. Now I average 100-200 pounds & have secret mushroom hunting spots in 16 states.
I still use the same stick to hunt with & the numbers get burned into it at the end of every season.
Thanks to morels I have appeared in a number of different outlets, including newspapers, magazines, documentaries, Fort Waynes’ & Chicagos’ news, the Travel Channel, the Midwest Outdoor Radio Talk Show. I am sponsored by Merrell Outdoor Gear & the list continues to grow.
Over the coarse of 4 years I filmed a Morel Mushroom Hunting Documentary. I made it educational as well as a fun film that every mushroom hunter can watch right before the mushroom season to really get the bug in them.
We also do Morel Mushroom Hunting Seminars at Gander Mountain, Home & Garden and Lake & Cabin Expos, which have drawn the biggest crowds of interest because we are telling secrets :) Our smallest seminar so far had 50 people. And biggest- around 200.

I would have to say the best thing about mushroom hunting is the people. I met a great deal of awesome people that share the same passion as I do. In the mushroom community I am known as the Mad Russian. Not because I am "mad" but because I am passionate.

With the spring coming right around the corner, I am very excited having my kids out with me in the woods. My son should just be walking by the time season rolls around & he has a pretty good Guide to put him on some Illusive Morels! :)
I am a huge advocate of taking kids mushroom hunting & passing the tradition.. teach them something they will remember you by forever!
Best of luck to you this spring! May the Forest be with you