Natural Scavenging on the Trail

[Doctari]

Ramps!!!!!

Be warned, they are addictive!!!!

[Smile]

Ramps!!!!!

Be warned, they are addictive!!!!

And you shall surely stink for several days after consuming

But yes, yummy!

[TD55]

Earth Worm Prretzels. You know how after a rain you see worms dried out on the sidewalk or driveway, pick one up and try it. They don't taste like anything. If you dig up live ones and season them with salt, and dry them out on rocks on a sunny day, you get earth worm pretzels. Don't rehydrate them, just snack on them like regular pretzels.

[Jack Tarlin]

Boy, I hate to be the one to rain on the parade, but there are any number of animals of all sorts........birds, mammals, reptiles, you name it......that need these foods a helluva lot more than hikers do, and this is especially the case during springtimeen the critters just got done with a long, hungry winter.

Every time you eat something out there like the foods described in the posts above, you are likely depriving some poor creature of a badly needed meal.

The occasional wild blueberry is one thing, but to actively and regularly seek out "wild" foods in order to supplement your diet is probably not a good idea. When we're on the Trail, we are essntially visitors out there, or to put it another way, we are uninvited guests in lands that constitute these animals' year-round homes. Going out there and eating up their food supply is the exact equivalent of a stranger coming into your house while you're away and devouring everything in your fridge pantry.

In fact, it's worse, as you can always go to a nearby store to find more food.

Animals don't have this option. Leave nature's bounty for the creatures that actually need it to survive.

[TD55]

Nonsense, that is way over the top.

[emerald]

You could eat certain plants, but, in keeping with the principles of Leave No Trace, you probably shouldn't. Leave the wild blueberries and raspberries and blackberries of summer for the birds and bears. Resist the temptation to spice up your noodles with ramps in the spring. “Chicken of the woods” mushrooms should stay in the woods. Wild watercress belongs in a stream, not a salad. Rather than brewing your own ginseng or sassafras tea from wild roots, visit the supermarket in town. Many edible plants along the A.T. are rare and endangered, and harvesting them is illegal. Even when the flora are plentiful, remember that the fauna of the Appalachians have no option other than to forage for it; you do.

http://www.appalachiantrail.org/site...t_FAQ.htm#sub4

[catfishrivers]

Boy, I hate to be the one to rain on the parade, but there are any number of animals of all sorts........birds, mammals, reptiles, you name it......that need these foods a helluva lot more than hikers do, and this is especially the case during springtimeen the critters just got done with a long, hungry winter.

Every time you eat something out there like the foods described in the posts above, you are likely depriving some poor creature of a badly needed meal.

The occasional wild blueberry is one thing, but to actively and regularly seek out "wild" foods in order to supplement your diet is probably not a good idea. When we're on the Trail, we are essntially visitors out there, or to put it another way, we are uninvited guests in lands that constitute these animals' year-round homes. Going out there and eating up their food supply is the exact equivalent of a stranger coming into your house while you're away and devouring everything in your fridge pantry.

In fact, it's worse, as you can always go to a nearby store to find more food.

Animals don't have this option. Leave nature's bounty for the creatures that actually need it to survive.

I found scores of edible mushrooms this past summer on my hikes. I ate the ones I was positive I had identified correctly, one of which was Laetiporus sulphureus, or "chicken of the woods mushroom". At first I gathered and ate whatever I found, but then I had the same thought...that I might be depriving one of the many deer I saw, a few with ribs very visible from being so thin. So I stopped gathering them for a while and to my surprise they remained in tact for most of the season and into winter. I watched several chicken of the woods mushrooms stay around for their entire growth cycle and then get covered with snow this past year. Here's one that paled with all the rainy weather it saw and then the snow:


I'm not going to lose any sleep for the one or two times I might stumble across a wild edible I am comfortable identifying and eating, but mostly I am sure it will just be easier for me to just eat my ramen noodles and a pop tart instead.

[emerald]

Glad you left it in the woods. It wouldn't have made much of a picture to post otherwise.

[Erin]

Do you get morel mushrooms? We hunt them here every April. The only mushrooms we hunt, are easy to ID and wonderful eats. You can see one on my gallery, the first pic. They are hollow inside. If they are not hollow, they are false morels-not recommended. Some people eat the false morels, they are dense inside, but they can be deadly. Not recommended. True morels look just like my pic...symmetrical, honecombed pattern hood, hood attached to the body and totally hollow inside. They are white, grey or yellow. The other mushrooms here are so easily confused with the deadly littlle brown ones, no way for me at least. Even with the books, and paper tests and the rest, I am not comfortable with our looks like a Chanterrelle. We have even ditched half free morels since they are easily confused with poisonous little browns that we will not chance it.
We tried ramps we got at the Farmer's market in Asheville. Wonderful. We hauled them home...stunk up the car like you would not believe, but they are great with pototoes, eggs, etc.

[The Weasel]

Taking plants - of any kind, including berries and mushrooms - is prohibited in most national parks, most wilderness areas (which can include state/national forests) and many other state lands. While I sorta doubt that scarfing a handful of blueberries will get you busted, the reasons for those rules are solid, and we should honor them.

This probably even applies (sob!) to thimbleberries on Isle Royale. Well, just one is probably OK....

TW

[OldStormcrow]

You could eat certain plants, but, in keeping with the principles of Leave No Trace, you probably shouldn't. Leave the wild blueberries and raspberries and blackberries of summer for the birds and bears. Resist the temptation to spice up your noodles with ramps in the spring. “Chicken of the woods” mushrooms should stay in the woods. Wild watercress belongs in a stream, not a salad. Rather than brewing your own ginseng or sassafras tea from wild roots, visit the supermarket in town. Many edible plants along the A.T. are rare and endangered, and harvesting them is illegal. Even when the flora are plentiful, remember that the fauna of the Appalachians have no option other than to forage for it; you do.

http://www.appalachiantrail.org/site...t_FAQ.htm#sub4

Geeez! Anyone can take something just too far. I'm sure that the handful of ramps that I might eat on one of my trips does much less to harm the animals' food supply and the environment than do the our actual drives to the trailheads.......consider the hydrocarbons emitted by your car, the oil and antifreeze and sulphuric acid run-off from the pavement, the birds and bugs and snakes that you squish while driving, the smog from coal powered electric plants after you wash and dry your favorite Patagonia top, the ethanol-laced fuel that you use in your vehicle that could have been served up as corn, the erosion from your Vasque boots with the fancy new "self-cleaning" treads, the perforations of the moles' tunnels with your rapidly clicking Leki poles, the moths that die in your campfire.....shall I go on?

[The Weasel]

Geeez! Anyone can take something just too far. I'm sure that the handful of ramps that I might eat on one of my trips does much less to harm the animals' food supply and the environment than do the our actual drives to the trailheads.......consider the hydrocarbons emitted by your car, the oil and antifreeze and sulphuric acid run-off from the pavement, the birds and bugs and snakes that you squish while driving, the smog from coal powered electric plants after you wash and dry your favorite Patagonia top, the ethanol-laced fuel that you use in your vehicle that could have been served up as corn, the erosion from your Vasque boots with the fancy new "self-cleaning" treads, the perforations of the moles' tunnels with your rapidly clicking Leki poles, the moths that die in your campfire.....shall I go on?

Yes, do go on. So far, it's a great list of things to avoid doing, along with not eating handfulls of ramps.

TW

[TD55]

Taking plants - of any kind, including berries and mushrooms - is prohibited in most national parks, most wilderness areas (which can include state/national forests) and many other state lands. While I sorta doubt that scarfing a handful of blueberries will get you busted, the reasons for those rules are solid, and we should honor them.

This probably even applies (sob!) to thimbleberries on Isle Royale. Well, just one is probably OK....

TW

So, how much of the AT goes through National Parks and Wilderness areas that prohibits me from eating ramps and worm pretzels?

[catfishrivers]

Do you get morel mushrooms? We hunt them here every April. The only mushrooms we hunt, are easy to ID and wonderful eats. You can see one on my gallery, the first pic. They are hollow inside. If they are not hollow, they are false morels-not recommended. Some people eat the false morels, they are dense inside, but they can be deadly. Not recommended. True morels look just like my pic...symmetrical, honecombed pattern hood, hood attached to the body and totally hollow inside. They are white, grey or yellow. The other mushrooms here are so easily confused with the deadly littlle brown ones, no way for me at least. Even with the books, and paper tests and the rest, I am not comfortable with our looks like a Chanterrelle. We have even ditched half free morels since they are easily confused with poisonous little browns that we will not chance it.
We tried ramps we got at the Farmer's market in Asheville. Wonderful. We hauled them home...stunk up the car like you would not believe, but they are great with pototoes, eggs, etc.

Sadly I currently lack morels... I have not yet come across them in the wild, but they sure are tasty. They look like little alien brains to me. Mushrooms I have found while hiking and later ate are: chicken of the woods, hedgehogs, chanterelles, cinnebar chanterelles, hen of the woods, black staining polyphore, devils trumpets, eastern cauliflower, and king bolettes.

[catfishrivers]

Oh one thing about wild mushrooms, they usually have bugs. You can eat them I guess, but I soak my finds in salt water first to do away with any hidden beasties. Then I boil for five mind, and then saute. Haven't gotten sick yet, but I don't see myself going thru the whole process to clean and cook them on my thru hike. It would just take more time than it'd be worth...

[Tipi Walter]

Boy, I hate to be the one to rain on the parade, but there are any number of animals of all sorts........birds, mammals, reptiles, you name it......that need these foods a helluva lot more than hikers do, and this is especially the case during springtimeen the critters just got done with a long, hungry winter.

Every time you eat something out there like the foods described in the posts above, you are likely depriving some poor creature of a badly needed meal.

The occasional wild blueberry is one thing, but to actively and regularly seek out "wild" foods in order to supplement your diet is probably not a good idea. When we're on the Trail, we are essntially visitors out there, or to put it another way, we are uninvited guests in lands that constitute these animals' year-round homes. Going out there and eating up their food supply is the exact equivalent of a stranger coming into your house while you're away and devouring everything in your fridge pantry.

In fact, it's worse, as you can always go to a nearby store to find more food.

Animals don't have this option. Leave nature's bounty for the creatures that actually need it to survive.

There's very people out in the woods actively eating wild edibles. On the other hand, there are cash-hungry poachers wiping out the ginseng and galax, but that's a different story. I'd say the threat from development, air pollution, sprawl, road building, logging, and National Park RV-motor home camp-madness needs to be addressed way before any direct action against plant-eaters. And btw, a huge percentage of the wild edibles I see in the forest "goes to waste" when autumn comes--they just wither and die. I've seen huge patches of chickweed left untouched(except by me)for decades, despite a healthy deer population.

When you look at the extinction of animals in the eastern U.S., species like passenger pigeons, mountain bison, elk, and wolves, it wasn't from a mass of people eating the wild edibles.

I found scores of edible mushrooms this past summer on my hikes. I ate the ones I was positive I had identified correctly, one of which was Laetiporus sulphureus, or "chicken of the woods mushroom". At first I gathered and ate whatever I found, but then I had the same thought...that I might be depriving one of the many deer I saw, a few with ribs very visible from being so thin. So I stopped gathering them for a while and to my surprise they remained in tact for most of the season and into winter. I watched several chicken of the woods mushrooms stay around for their entire growth cycle and then get covered with snow this past year. Here's one that paled with all the rainy weather it saw and then the snow:


I'm not going to lose any sleep for the one or two times I might stumble across a wild edible I am comfortable identifying and eating, but mostly I am sure it will just be easier for me to just eat my ramen noodles and a pop tart instead.

I was camped on a high ridge several months ago and found enough food to live for about 2 or 3 weeks: Acorns/rock tripe and some goldenrods for tea. There were billions of acorns becoming worm food. Below is my recent fotog of some healthy looking shelf mushroom. I ate a big camp meal with a Scandinavian backpacking lady who picked a bunch of chicken-of-the-woods and fried it up in her skillet. We ate heartily and then looked carefully and realized about a third of the meal was made up of tiny white worms.

Taking plants - of any kind, including berries and mushrooms - is prohibited in most national parks, most wilderness areas (which can include state/national forests) and many other state lands. While I sorta doubt that scarfing a handful of blueberries will get you busted, the reasons for those rules are solid, and we should honor them.

This probably even applies (sob!) to thimbleberries on Isle Royale. Well, just one is probably OK....

TW

This reminds me of a cartoon and the fact that national forests are getting logged and clearcut on a daily basis, but don't pick the violet leaves!! I wonder, when the next regulation comes up in an over-regulated Park or wilderness, something like a $10 nightly fee, or Day Use Only with no overnight camping, will you be so eager to describe it and support it?

Geeez! Anyone can take something just too far. I'm sure that the handful of ramps that I might eat on one of my trips does much less to harm the animals' food supply and the environment than do the our actual drives to the trailheads.......consider the hydrocarbons emitted by your car, the oil and antifreeze and sulphuric acid run-off from the pavement, the birds and bugs and snakes that you squish while driving, the smog from coal powered electric plants after you wash and dry your favorite Patagonia top, the ethanol-laced fuel that you use in your vehicle that could have been served up as corn, the erosion from your Vasque boots with the fancy new "self-cleaning" treads, the perforations of the moles' tunnels with your rapidly clicking Leki poles, the moths that die in your campfire.....shall I go on?

The voice of reason in a sea of Tent Police.

[OldStormcrow]

For those of you who are going to be thru-hiking this year and your drive takes you more than an hour to get to Georgia or Maine.....take a moment when you get to the trailhead to look at the critters stuck in the grill of your vehicle and the fur stuck in your undercarriage, or consider the quantity of small birds sucked into the jet's engines, or the shredded deer that were trying to cross your Amtrac rails.....then come back and talk to me about no trace. I'm still eatin' my ramps!

[The Weasel]

*** And btw, a huge percentage of the wild edibles I see in the forest "goes to waste" when autumn comes--they just wither and die. I've seen huge patches of chickweed left untouched(except by me)for decades, despite a healthy deer population.***

***

I was camped on a high ridge several months ago and found enough food to live for about 2 or 3 weeks: Acorns/rock tripe and some goldenrods for tea. There were billions of acorns becoming worm food.

This reminds me of a cartoon and the fact that national forests are getting logged and clearcut on a daily basis, but don't pick the violet leaves!! I wonder, when the next regulation comes up in an over-regulated Park or wilderness, something like a $10 nightly fee, or Day Use Only with no overnight camping, will you be so eager to describe it and support it?

Well, yes, I already do support such things. Fees pay for my use, into a system that lacks money. I think that's fair, and reduces the cost (called 'taxes') on those who don't spend the night.

As for 'going to waste,' none of those things were wasted, as your comment about "becoming worm food" admits. Mom Nature don't waste things: She recycles so things continue to thrive next year for the local life to make it then, too. When you remove some of that, well, you're playing a small part in the Humans versus Mom Nature fight. Who do you think's gonna win?

Bring your own food.

TW

[randyg45]

Piano-wire rabbit snares. Be stealthy. I've told people I saw a hawk drop his kill....

[emerald]

Piano-wire rabbit snares.

Not practical for someone who's through hiking or legal in many if not most locations and possibly trail-wide.