Salt Fork State Park Morel Hunt

May 3rd, 2009 - Report by Jerry Pepera

We had 26 people show up on a rainy Sunday morning for the Morel hunt at Salt Fork State Park.  We hunted Hosaks cave (Area 29) in the park along the Orange Loop trail.  The day before our event Salt Fork hosted the 21st Annual Bigfoot Hunters Convention and EXPO!  (I'm not sure what you do at a Bigfoot EXPO, but trust me it must have been great!)

Now I thought Morel hunting was pretty popular, but honestly they had 425 people looking for Bigfoot and we could only scrape up a couple dozen people to hunt Morels. Some of you may recall the experience we had at Shawnee some years ago when we bumped into the BiGfoot hunters in the woods.  These guys always claim they have a picture of the big fella....at home. There never seems to be a shortage of plaster footprint castings either.  The sad part is that this dedicated bunch probably has better luck than we do in hunting our respective quarries.

All truthfullness aside, we weren't skunked and several new members did find some nice specimens including a large bagful found under a single Elm tree by Conner and Carrie Rowe from Wooster. The most success was on South facing slopes and high up on ridge tops. After a stern warning by yours truly, 4 members got thoroughly lost inspite of having a GPS unit among them. Fortunately, we traded cell phone numbers at the start and remained in spotty contact with them. While the returning hikers went to lunch in Cambridge, Rich Hill and Debra Shankland joined me in trying to find the rest of the group, but after an hour of hiking and blowing our whistle we concluded we were chasing them around the park instead of intercepting them. While we waited at Hosaks cave for their return, our lunch crowd also got lost looking for the restaurant I directed them to in Cambridge. I didn't realize it at the time but the chinese buffet we frequent after this event changed names and they drove right past it.

Sadly, the day before our event a young woman fell to her death at the very spot we waited for our lost hikers.  The Orange Loop Trail passes directly over Hosaks cave and the stream that passes over the trail forms the water fall cascading over the cave. The trail is perhaps 15 - 20 feet from the cave overhang. The unfortunate woman was apparently off-trail and jumped on a rock to avoid getting her feet wet.  She lost her footing and slid over the top of the cave. All this in spite of the memorial at the trail head warning of a previous death there a few years ago.

In spite of the hiccups, we had a nice outing and since some new members actually found Morels we can continue to offer this venue with a straight face!