These mushroom foragers hit the jackpot. Then they got creative

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Dan Gebhart surveys some of the haul of chanterelle mushrooms. Jordan Anderson hide caption

Dan Gebhart surveys some of the haul of chanterelle mushrooms.

Tis the season – mushroom season, that is.

Dan Gebhart and Jordan Anderson are good friends and long-time foragers, and this year they hit the jackpot. They live on California's Lost Coast, in Humboldt County, where it's mostly undeveloped and natural wildlife abounds.

Every day they eat something they've foraged, and they forage for everything from mussels off the coast to wild berries in the woods. But this year, the mushrooms were prolific. One day in October they were foraging and came across a bunch of this golden, flower-like mushroom – chanterelles.

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Gebhart and Anderson say that sometimes all you see is a bright orange popping out against the forest floor. Jordan Anderson hide caption

Gebhart and Anderson say that sometimes all you see is a bright orange popping out against the forest floor.

Chanterelles are a hot commodity for food lovers and foragers. They can't be easily cultivated, so most of the time the only way to get your hands on one is to find it in the wild.

Gebhart has been chanterelle hunting for 10 years, so he'd like to think he's gotten pretty good at it. He says he can even sniff them out, like a mushroom detective.

"Jordan doesn't really believe me, but every time that I have stopped and started smelling the air and said that I could smell them, we found some shortly after that," he says. "And I'm not sure if I'm actually smelling the mushrooms or if it's just the way that the forest smells after it first rains, when everything comes alive again after being the dry season."

"But chanterelles do have a distinct smell. It's sort of fruity and earthy at the same time. You know, buttery apricot and an earthiness to it that just smells like, you know, warm, fertile forest humus."

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Anderson and Gebhart's friend Parker Ashton-Youngs makes a mushroom discovery of his own. Jordan Anderson hide caption

Anderson and Gebhart's friend Parker Ashton-Youngs makes a mushroom discovery of his own.

Anderson maintains a healthy amount of skepticism.

"Well, my theory was that maybe he spotted them first and then just told me he had another spidey sense ... but there's some truth to what he's saying. There's a sense of it," she says.

While the jury is still out on Gebhart's special mushroom senses, the pair definitely know what they're doing. In their combined two decades of foraging, Gebhart and Anderson have learnt a lot of tips and tricks from their friends. Things like knowing where different wildlife grow, the habitats in which they thrive, what kind of trees to look for.

Gebhart learnt that chanterelles tend to grow in the same spots as they have in the past. So over the span of a month they went back to check the regular spots along with some new ones, finding more than 200 pounds of this special mushroom.

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