The trumpet is a trickster. It hides, disguising itself as a leaf shadow. You can be looking at a hillside covered in leaves and see nothing. Then, you find one trumpet! Score! After that you realize there are many more around you that were hiding!

Hunting these is so different than hunting porcini–which are so huge sometimes you can see them while driving by. My husband’s first porcini was a drive-by find! Or hunting chanterelles which is like an Easter egg hunt–pretty little (or big!) orange beauties peaking out from under the leaves. Both of those mushrooms you can hunt from a relative distance, they stand out. Not black trumpets. They blend, they hide in the shadows.

My apologies for the quality of this pictures, it is from my phone, but that will just make the challenge that much more fun. Pretend it’s blurry because you’re foraging in the rain and your vision is obscured by it.

Now, find the trumpet:

Did you find it? It’s a lone little creature, not hanging out with any of its friends.

Do you see it?

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Does this help?

They are well worth the search. I know, finding it in the picture does not help you taste them but maybe it will inspire you to find a local mushroom group or foray and search for youself!! Just a disclaimer here, if you’ve never foraged for wild mushrooms, don’t do it alone and randomly eat things you find it the woods. I don’t want any of my readers to die from hardcore food porn attempts. I want you to live on to eat well!!

I will be sad when this season comes to an end since I’ve found some good new trumpet patches this year! I will just have to enjoy them while they last.