Mushroom-hunting championship draws large crowd By Gary L. Smith May 7, 2006 - pjstar.com
HENRY - Nearly 450 morel mushroom hunters swarmed into wooded areas at a rural Henry golf course Saturday morning in what organizers called a record year for both mushroom findings and crowd attendance.
At least three devotees of the spongy fungi collected more than 100 morels apiece, and many toted bags of 50 or more at the end of the official, two-hour hunt at the 11th annual Illinois State Morel Mushroom Hunting Championship at Crooked Knee Golf Course west of Henry.
And the crowd attending the accompanying mini-festival filled buildings at the event's new location at the Marshall-Putnam Fairgrounds through Saturday afternoon, bidding for morels during a large auction and browsing through the wares of more than 70 craftspeople and other vendors who had set up booths.
"I'm going to guess we had somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 people," said event co-organizer Tom Naumann of Magnolia, though he said a more precise figure will come from drawing tickets that were handed out partly to gauge attendance.
"Very few of us had a vision of it being this big," said Tom Davis, a Henry businessman who heads the tourism committee of the Henry Area Chamber of Commerce, which co-sponsored the event this year.
Winning the grand prize of $200 and a hand-carved walnut trophy was Bill Popkin of Morrison, a retired park ranger who now works as a substitute teacher. He found 178 morels through methods that he described in the typical mushroom hunter's style of keeping things to himself.
"I went out and wandered around in the woods, and that's where I found them," he said.
"He won't even tell me where he found them," joked his 17-year-old son, Trevor, who found 65 of his own while hunting in other areas.
Gabe Gaul, 25, had the second-highest total of 121 after driving over from the Iowa City, Iowa, area on the chance he'd be able to get in as one of the last-minute walk-ons who had not pre-registered. His comments illustrated why morel hunters often wear gloves and protective clothing.
"I found them all around one big tree," he said. "I had to crawl under some multiflora roses, and that's where I found them."
Not everyone left with full bags. Tammy Baker, who drove from Des Moines, Iowa, found only three morels. Yet she drove away in a compact car into which had been crammed one of the other reasons people attend the event.
Baker paid $230 at auction for one of three chainsaw carvings of morels done by Alex Babich, an Indiana man who was last year's grand champion morel hunter. He found only about 60 mushrooms Saturday, though his carvings fetched a total of nearly $700.
The carving will be the centerpiece in the landscaped garden of a new home, Baker said, adding with a laugh, "I'm going to go home and tell my husband that I found the biggest morel."
Bidders were paying upwards of $60 a pound for mushrooms at the auction, but one person apparently chose another option for obtaining the seasonal treat.
A contestant's bag of 65 morels was stolen from a fairgrounds building where the contest counting was being done.
Its owner, Dana Harrington of Waverly, had his $25 entry fee refunded, was paid an additional $25 and was entered in next year's event without charge. The episode indicated a need for new security measures, Naumann said.
"We'll figure out how to deal with that next year," he said.
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