Hunting plants

[MCgunner]

One of my hobbies. If you're around Texas, this site is very good. When I'm in the woods squirrel hunting, I'll often go to foraging. It's come in handy some episodes of my life, when I was broke in college. Of course, I was ever in the quest for meat, too, anyway I could get it.

http://www.foragingtexas.com/

 

[hoghunting]

Thanks MC, also being in Texas makes it very handy as I didn't realize there are so many edible plants.

 

[barstoolguru]

I love the field mushrooms

 

[Texan Scott]

MC, best link I've picked up in 6 months. Thanks!

 

[MCgunner]

I love the field mushrooms

Mushrooms are something I've not messed with, worried I wouldn't know a poison one from a good one. They can be hard to identify, I understand, and they have little nutrient value. I do love me some sauteed shrooms, though, but I just buy 'em, don't trust the wild ones.

MC, best link I've picked up in 6 months. Thanks!

No problem. I figured someone would appreciate it. Best pics I've found, yet. Foraging plants gives me something to do when I'm bumming around the woods off season or just out watching for squirrels and they're not out.

 

[22-rimfire]

I pretty much stay away from mushrooms in the field. It is too easy to mis-identify one of them. Sometimes you get the family right, but the actual genus may in fact be poisonous.

I enjoyed foraging while I lived in Texas. Not so much for food or substance, more to feed my natural curiosities about plants and nature in general.

 

[buck460XVR]

In Wisconsin, it's morels during spring turkey hunting and wild Ginseng during early fall hunting. Both can be cash crops also. Last spring, fresh morels sold for $14-$20 a pound cause it was dry and cold. While they were not as numerous as years past, I still manged to get all I wanted to eat and still have two grocery bags left over to sell.

 

[MCgunner]

I enjoyed foraging while I lived in Texas. Not so much for food or substance, more to feed my natural curiosities about plants and nature in general.

Last two years of college, I lived off campus and I had a job one summer in Pearsall, counting cotton insects on a research project. It was research done by USDA/Cotton Inc./Texas Ag Extension Service and I was living on a ranch free in one of his shacks normally occupied by, to use the PC term, undocumented workers. We counted the guy's cotton. He told me to hunt for what I wanted (rabbits mostly, place was ate up with rabbits) and I picked plants, too. I made it on a 3 dollar a week food budget. Hey, I was struggling at a 2.23 an hour job trying to make tuition/fees and books.

That's what got me started at it. Good memories if you don't have to go back and repeat it. LOL! Now days, I just like to add to a meal now and again and, yeah, I like the learning. I haven't done it hard over the years, but when I'm out and get bored, I will. I remember many a hunting camp meal with squirrel or rabbit accompanied by nopalitos or dandelion or lambsquarter depending on the location of the lease. I mean, you get tired of Dinty Moore and Wolf Brand after a while. You just gotta KILL something and need something to go with it.

 

[22-rimfire]

At $2.23/hr, you were doing well. I was making $1.60/hr back in those days.

I do know Morrels and a few others on sight, but pretty much the rest of them I leave alone.

 

[MCgunner]

At $2.23/hr, you were doing well. I was making $1.60/hr back in those days.

That was a summer job. I worked the dining hall at 1.60 and hour freshman year. I moved to a restaurant at the student center and got a 10 cent raise. ROFL! I worked as many as 3 jobs to make ends meet back then and was taking 17 hours minimum and being a science major, had a lot of labs. One semester I was working at an analytical lab at about 2.50 an hour, working at the theater as a projectionist at night (could study while working), and on Saturdays put together motorcycles out of the crates at the local Yamaha shop for 10 bucks a bike (took about an hour). I didn't have time to forage THAT semester. I walked out of there with a BS and NO loans to pay off. Not many can claim THAT.

But, I was young and vigorous back then. I got up at 4:15 the other morning to go deer hunting and slept the rest of the day when I got home. At the tender age of 60, I've turned into a wuss, I'm afraid. I don't think meth-amphetamine would help. Maybe it's low T, who knows? I did have plenty of THAT back then.

 

[MCgunner]

Oh, another thing, when I was living on that farm in Pearsall, I hunted with a .22 because shotgun shells were too expensive. That's how broke I was. Shotgun shells haven't gone up all THAT much, either, since those days. Think 12 gauge bulk loads were about 3 bucks a box back then, ain't much over that now! I never quite figured out why inflation didn't seem to affect shotgun ammo, but I ain't griping about it.