Ginseng hunting

OUTDOOR

I don’t always get a chance to head out to the woods early in the fall._I’m either getting ready for my trip to Colorado or I am already there, which makes it hard for me to do one of my favorite things: Hunt for ginseng. ___ Ginseng hunting for me is a simple pleasure. I get to spend time in the woods and hopefully get paid to do it._Just by saying the word ginseng makes people think that it’s worth hundreds of dollars._ Early reports this year had that number near $800._ That’s nothing to sneeze at.

My early exposure to ginseng was listening to some of the old river rats talk about how they hunted up the valuable root._I learned that the red berries were the dead giveaway. Being young and impressionable I hit the woods and dug up three red berried plants. I thought that I had found short-term financial security._Turns out that I had found Jack in the Pulpit, which also has red berries, but isn’t worth a penny._That mistake forced me back to my_career as a night crawler supplier to local fisherman.

Getting back to present day, my timing in the early fall is usually off by just a little, except for this year._I was actually off by a lot. I hit two spots._ The first one was a prospect spot._ I had never hunted ginseng at this spot before but I thought that it looked ‘shangy._Like a lot of things, looks can be deceiving. _I never found a single plant so I decided to go to a spot where I had a positive track record.

The second spot was a place I had hunted a few times over the years. I never found a lot in this spot but the plants always seemed to be easy to find and easier to dig up. I considered this as a place where I could go to restore my confidence as a ‘shanger._I can’t say that at the end of the day I had gained back any of that confidence because I found only two lousy plants. I guess it’s not always about the money, which is easy to say when your ginseng bag is empty.

This brings me back to my earlier point about my timing being off._My lack of success in ginseng hunting had more to do with the lack of rain combined with the heat making it so dry for so long. The leaves and stems of the ginseng plants dried up and wilted away fairly quickly this fall.

So, another ginseng hunting year is in the books._In a normal year I usually find enough ginseng to pay for my elk hunting tag, but obviously not this year. In a semirelated matter, if anyone needs any night crawlers give me a call.

BY DAVE BECK