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Hello folks,
A quick introduction:
My interest in truffles came through my interest in other fungi. In the upper Midwest I enjoy foraging for morels, chanterelles, various boletes, and black trumpets; I also enjoy making forays to find and try to identify whatever fungi are fruiting. As I learned more about various fungi I (of course) became intrigued by truffles, which seemed exotic and thousands of miles out of reach.
Then, in the depth of a northern Minnesota winter, I read a copy of the 1903 journal article that first described and named Tuber lyonii, which we commonly know as the pecan truffle. The type specimen was found in Minnesota.
Game on!
This spring I got a German wirehaired pointer puppy, “Mo,” to complement my geriatric German shorthair. My plan all along had been to train this puppy to scent hunt black trumpets. Trumpets will be my target during this course, and weather permitting I should be able to put Mo on plenty of wild trumpets in the second half of the summer. This summer and fall, I plan to do as much searching as I can for native truffles in Minnesota and Wisconsin. With persistence and luck, I hope to identify productive areas that I could then return to in 2016–after having spent some time adapting Mo’s above-ground scent work to hypogynous fungi.
I look forward to “meeting” my classmates and learning from all of you.
Curt
Thanks for the tip, Alana–FWF is a nice shop; I had the opportunity to check it out last fall. I’m good to go with dried trumpets, and I believe my midwestern trumpets will be fruiting before FWF can get their hands on West Coast trumpets, but I’ll keep them in mind!
Here’s Mo working on some simple box finds.
A brief background, which I can elaborate on if necessary. Mo is a very young German wirehaired pointer, and my expectations of us in this course are tempered due to his youth and our limited time working together.
We live in northern Minnesota, in a region where extremely little is known of the native truffles. I do hope later this year to identify some areas to hunt native truffles, particularly pecan truffles, but at this time I’m working with Mo on black trumpets–which I do know how and where to find in my area. This summer I plan to put him on trumpets in the field, and they probably will be Mo’s only fungal target this year.
I am also planning to hunt upland birds with Mo, but I am more passionate about mushroom hunting than bird hunting!
As for this video, Mo does seem to be hitting on the scent but at times he checks with me whenever he passes a box. I’m trying to be mindful not to cue him, but in trying to reward him for interest and proximity I might be doing so.
Second, often Mo initially signals his interest in the correct box by stopping and looking to me. After his initial reward, he frequently paws the box. I’ve been rewarding this as well and wonder if or when I should withold rewards until he marks with a paw.
Thanks!
P.S. Sooner or later someone will probably ask about my cue that we’re on a mushroom hunt, “houby.” This is simply the plural of the Czech word “houba,” or mushroom. Mo’s heritage may be mostly German, but mine is mostly Czech!
Here Mo and I are working on lesson two, shaping an alert.
I’ve seen that Mo no longer checks with me very frequently on empty boxes–he races through (occasionally missing a box with a target on first pass) and alerts by looking to me and/or placing a paw on the box. I am still rewarding him for any alert, but am trying to reward more lavishly when he paws the target box.
As you can see, we have a few more distractions present in the house this week compared to our work in the first lesson.
Finally, Alana pointed out after watching our first video that pulling him off the targets might be counterproductive. I’ve worked around this issue by leaving Mo in place after a box hunt, collecting the boxes, and moving them to another room (shutting the door behind me so that Mo can’t follow). Thus, the scenes in this movie alternate between rooms.
Here are three photos of potential scent work sites at or very near our home:
This first site is our back yard. Largely prairie vegetation–by the end of summer the big bluestem will be 6-7 feet high. For now, though, its cover is appropriate for Mo; I’m guessing he and the cover will grow together, so that by the time it is higher and thicker he’ll be comfortable in it. But I’ll monitor that!
Morning, raining, wind coming from the left side, target in the left 1/3: I would approach the hill from the bottom right, quartering with Mo diagonally across the hill as I cover the area from bottom right to top left. There could be eddies behind the small trees center left and the fenced bush in the center.
Fall, afternoon, hot day: air would definitely be moving up the hill as well as across from left to right. I would approach the site from the top right of the photo, at the top of the hill, and quarter with Mo diagonally across the hill working from the top right of the photo to the lower left.
This next site is across the road from our house. As in the previous photo, I am looking upslope. I would approach the cool rainy and the hot dry scenarios just as I described for the first site. Possibility of eddies at the trees center left (I swear I didn’t try to replicate the structures of the first picture!). When it is hot, strong possibility of plumes over the areas of dark basaltic stone exposed in various places on this site, as visible in the foreground.
This site is close to the previous one; I chose it because it presents a relatively simple wooded scene with ground cover that will remain low through the year (lilly of the valley, low ferns, and logger’s leaf). I shot the photo facing across the slope. Thus, if the wind is blowing left to right it would be coming uphill. On a cool, rainy day I would expect the moisture and the fact that the wind would be fighting against any possible katabatic currents to keep the scent holding fairly tightly in place. I would assess the strength of the wind and, assuming air currents were indeed moving uphill, I would start on the right and quarter across the slope perpendicular to the fall line, working from right to left. Possibility of an eddy to the right of the large tree trunk at the right of the photo.On a hot, dry afternoon I would expect scenting conditions to be more difficult and the scent to be dispersed more quickly up the slope. I would still quarter in the same pattern, moving right to left. I wouldn’t anticipate plumes of scent in a shaded, canopied area but it is possible that scent would move upward on the downhill side of the large tree trunk, since it is a physical obstacle to uphill movement and because the tree’s higher, broader canopy creates a larger opening in the understory. Still there is a possibility of an eddy behind the trunk (on the uphill side).
Here are Mo and I working on Week 3. I have added a couple boxes to make the hides a bit more complex, I have varied the pattern the boxes are in, I have worked Mo off-lead, I have required Mo to alert with a paw on the box, and I have refined my use of the cue word (“houby”).
I’ve noticed that Mo seems to do well, but approaches the hides with a bit less enthusiasm than he had in previous weeks. I have wondered if he might be getting just a wee bit bored with this level of work, but he may also simply be settling down a bit (in this context) from his crazy puppy enthusiasm.
Week 4 Homework: Environmental Awareness
Scene 1:
Given that it is currently 50 degrees at 1 pm, immediately following a two-hour rain, I am assuming that temperatures are relatively stable and I wouldn’t anticipate any anabatic or katabatic airflow to strengthen or weaken the very light wind cited in the hypothetical. With moisture on the ground, scenting conditions for skin rafts left after the rain should be very good, but we’re looking for fungi here, and I would guess that the hard rain permeating the leaf litter and entering the soil would have “washed out” the volatiles that otherwise might have built up earlier in the day. These volatiles should now be moving again, but I would guess that scent might be pooled up in the deep leaf litter–and potentially, if the leaf litter is from the previous year and has been matted by snow cover (as it often is in the upper midwest) it is possible that this less-permeable surface would cause odor to shift and emerge in places that are not directly above our target.
Black trumpets could well be emerging from, or even hiding beneath, such leaf litter if this were a midwestern forest with many oak trees. I would approach the site directly into the wind, with Mo quartering roughly perpendicular to it. I would pay attention to the possibility that scent was draining down the trough cited in the hypothetical (which appears to be oriented roughly parallel to the light wind) and I would consider that such scent could be emanating from a variety of places further up the drainage. Overall, these seem like promising conditions for scent work.
Scene 2:
Ticks, mosquitoes, blackflies: the holy trinity of northern Minnesota! At 40 degrees I wouldn’t expect the flying insects to be particularly active, but they’d be around, especially in a very light rain. The wind, though, would (thankfully) make them a non-issue on this given day. Ticks, on the other hand, could (depending on the time of year) be out in great numbers. Mo has been vaccinated for Lyme already, and if I anticipated extended work in heavy tick areas I probably would have dosed him with Frontline, even though I am as conservative as possible with such chemicals.
If I had Mo out and this seemed like an excellent opportunity for success–a spot known to produce the target fungus, for instance–then no doubt I would give it a whirl but I would be quick to pull the plug on a day like the one described. Too windy, and the matted grass hiding sticks and branches would make moving through the area a bit treacherous. I’d want to work uphill, with Mo quartering across the wind, but if the trail came in at the top of the hill then I might descend just partway and work my way back up toward the top, just to see if it would be worth our time to work. My guess is that prolonged searches would result in exhaustion and frustration, potentially affecting both of our enthusiasm for future hunting. Time for a cup of coffee and a book back at camp, I think.
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