GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- It's morel season in Michigan, and there's a plan in Lansing to allow morel hunters to sell the high-priced wild mushrooms to restaurants. However, not everyone supports the idea.
Steve Besser, who says he's been hunting for morels for more than 40 years, describes it as a religious experience. Like many other morel hunters, he has his secret spots that he doesn't share with anyone.
He believes making it so that morel hunting becomes more of a commercial experience would ruin it for people who truly enjoy it.
"I would love to be able to go out and have a morel dish at a restaurant somewhere all through the year," Besser said. "That would be awesome. However, you start throwing profit into this and commercialization... you are going to have everybody and your brother now pounding down the woods."
Rep. Triston Cole says the legislation could benefit communities and put money back into them on a local level.
"It's getting more and more popular, which is all the more reason to make it easier for chefs to acquire this elusive fungus here in Michigan; and you know that's exactly what chefs want," Cole said.
Trimell Hawkins, the executive chef at Grand Rapids restaurant Black Heron, said they are looking into adding morels to some of their dishes in the future, but says it's less likely because they are so rare.
"Restaurants stray away from them because it's a situation where you have them one week but you don't have them the next week, and if that's the situation you can't really make them a prominent item on your menu," Hawkins said.
Hawkins says license or not, you have to know who you can trust when it comes to finding morels.
"You have to find a purveyor who is reliable and you can trust," he said.
Besser says that's a trait that won't be easy to find if the legislation passes.
"If you open up these flood gates, it's just going to open up another can of worms," he said.
