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This article was published 11/7/2015 (1899 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SANDILANDS PROVINCIAL FOREST — On a sunny Tuesday morning, I’m bouncing along a four-by-four track winding through sandy, rolling Crown land in southeastern Manitoba.

Ahead is a pristine-looking SUV whose driver is meticulously avoiding the muddy holes along the trail. It’s an unlikely vehicle for a morning of off-roading.

BARTLEY KIVES / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Jim Jaworski, collecting chanterelles in Sandilands Provincial Forest.

The three men inside also don’t fit the redneck stereotype. The driver is Jim Jaworski, the clean-cut owner of Winnipeg’s Kenaston Wine Market. In the passenger seat is Bernard Mirlycourtois, a retired Winnipeg chef famous for his gentle demeanour. Jaworski’s son Scott, who runs a digital-media company in the U.K., is in the back seat.

The three men are going hunting for mushrooms, a prey just as elusive if not as mobile as any beast or fowl.

While wild fungi can’t flee from foragers, they are the very definition of ephemeral: The fruiting bodies sprout from the forest floor without warning after it rains. They may only exist for days or even hours before they’re consumed by worms, destroyed by rot or picked by voracious humans, who prize several species so highly they guard the locations of favourite patches like family secrets.

"Prepare to swear to secrecy respecting the GPS co-ordinates," the elder Jaworski intones before the excursion to Sandilands Provincial Forest, a 3,000-square-kilometre tract of trees that’s neither wilderness nor fully managed landscape.

Sandilands exists primarily as a timber preserve. More than 70 small-scale logging companies harvest trees within the forest, using quotas reviewed by Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship every five years.

As a result, almost every patch of pines within the Sandilands has been logged at some point since European settlers moved into southern Manitoba. This logging, along with wildfires, has thinned out the underbrush, providing an open-forest playground for hunters, cross-country skiers, ATV riders, mountain bikers and people who forage for wild edibles.

BARTLEY KIVES / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Scott Jaworski, Jim Jaworski and Bernard Mirlycourtois survey clearcut land in Sandilands Provincial Forest. A favourite chanterelle-picking spot was destroyed.

The multiplicity of uses can lead to conflicts. Cyclists, for example, stand the risk of being mistaken for venison on the move if they choose to ride in the Sandilands during the white-tailed deer hunt in the fall. ATV users have been blamed for fires, such as a massive blaze that consumed 34 square kilometres of Sandilands in 2008.

This week, Jim Jaworski and Mirlycourtois are aghast at a clearcut in a corner of the forest that just so happened to include some of their favourite places to forage for chanterelles and boletus mushrooms.

"See that high ground over there?" asks Jaworski, pointing to a ridge of rubble amidst a clearcut that appears to be a few months old.

"We used to go up and down those ridges. They were the top-producing areas for chanterelles. It’s just shocking and devastating."

Jaworski and Mirlycourtois discovered the destruction of "their" mushrooming area last week. It is of course not theirs at all, existing as it does on Crown land.

As well, hundreds if not thousands of Manitobans are aware of the location of prime chanterelle, bolete, morel and matsutake patches within the province. They just don’t advertise this information in often-vain attempts to keep the fungi for themselves.

As a result of this secrecy, it’s all but impossible to estimate the number of active mushroomers who forage for personal use or commercial sale, let alone contact them if need be.

Hence the irony of Jaworski’s ire about the clearcut: He wanted the province to issue a notice about the logging operation.

Manitoba Conservation says regional forestry teams will take mycological considerations into account when they approve tree-harvesting plans — provided foragers give up the locations of their prized mushroom patches.

"The team will hold this information in strict confidence, identifying it only as an area of interest with specific management strategies to protect the sensitive area from any negative impacts of timber harvesting," the ministry said in a statement.

Jaworski, 60, has been mushrooming for two decades. He learned how to hunt golden-yellow chanterelles and reddish-brown boletes two decades ago from the 67-year-old Mirlycourtois. The chef in turn learned how to find mushrooms as a 12-year-old, accompanying his father on excursions into the Forest of Tronçais in central France.

After driving from the clearcut to a still intact patch of forest, the Jaworskis and Mirlycourtois step out of their vehicle, each wielding a curved mushrooming knife in one hand and a cloth shopping bag in the other. Mesh bags get caught on trees, apparently.

Scott Jaworski quickly spots a sizable king bolete at the side of the four-by-four track. In a matter of seconds, Mirlycourtois bends down, snips it off at the stem, trims the dirt off the base and plops the cleaned mushroom into his bag.

The smaller chanterelles are more plentiful but more elusive. They tend to be covered with a litter of dry pine needles. You almost need to look sideways to spot them.

"You have to have a good eye. Sometimes, you almost walk on the mushroom, but you don’t see it," said Mirlycourtois.

He said he loves foraging even when he doesn’t find mushrooms, thanks to the exercise and the fresh air. "It’s like when you go fishing. You don’t catch fish all the time," he said.

And what happens when you meet other mushroom hunters on the trail? "You try to beat them," he said.

To the mushrooms, he means.

At least that’s what I think the gentle chef meant.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca