Prairie Sportsman

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Announcer

The following program is a production of Pioneer Public Television. (light flute music) Yeah, you're kinda primarily lookin' around for the trees first and then comin' up and shifting your gaze down around the ground once you find the right tree. -

Man

It's a true conservation club. That was our whole motto was conservation. We don't like to call ourselves a sportsman's club. Even though other lakes are getting the zebra mussels, we're trying to keep 'em out. (thrilling music) -

Announcer

Funding for this program was provided by The Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund. Safe Basements of Minnesota, your basement waterproofing and foundation repair specialist since 1990. Peace of mind is a safe basement. Diamond Willow Advanced Care Assisted Living, providing custom homes with smaller settings designed especially for high care needs. Live Wide Open, telling stories of why people have chosen to live wide open in West Central Minnesota. More at LiveWideOpen.com. Western Minnesota Prairie Waters, quietly beautiful and widely connected. (light guitar music) -

Bret

Minnesota's abundant food harvest comes not only from our farms and lakes. Hidden in the woods are delicacies like lobster mushrooms, watercress and fiddleheads. Perhaps no one is better at finding these wild gems than Mike Kempenich and his crew at Gentleman Forager. (upbeat music) Mike is a former corporate head hunter who says his boss gave him an opportunity to look for a new opportunity seven years ago. So he turned his passion for wild mushroom foraging into a business that now engages more than 20 foragers in finding wild produce for restaurants and food businesses. While you can search for mushrooms like chanterelles, black trumpets and porcini from June to November, the prized morel can only be found about two weeks in the spring. To learn from a master, we went out morel hunting near Waterville with the Gentleman Forager, otherwise known as... Chief Fungi. Fungal Overlord. Owner. (laughs) (light music) So you'd think, when you're searching for mushrooms on the forest floor here, you'd spend a lot of time lookin' at the ground. But, Mike, you actually spend a lot of time lookin' up ahead for different trees. Yeah, really, in the spring for morels, we're looking for elms. They're a mycorrhizal mushroom so they have a particular association with the tree and that's true with a lot of mushrooms. A lot of mushrooms we pick is edible mushrooms. Chanterelles, they like oak trees, they like, further parts north they like pine trees but yeah, you're kinda primarily lookin' around for the trees first and then comin' up and shifting your gaze down around the ground once you find the right tree. So we're lookin' for elms but you want 'em dying, right, not dead? - Yeah, we want 'em dying. Like this one here. This is clearly mostly dead which is good 'cause its just recently started dying. You can see some leaves still attached to it here and that's the kind of thing we're lookin' for. And then really, anywhere if you laid this tree down, anywhere in that diameter, its root system extends to so in theory it could be 30 feet around us here. -

Bret

Mushrooms are the fruit of fungi. Their roots, called mycelium, spread out thread-like underground and break down dead or dying organic matter like tree roots. Often, I'll just stop and get down like this so I can just keep my vision within about 10 feet or so. And especially when they're smaller like this, they're more difficult to pick out and that'll often give you a moment to see somethin' that you would ordinarily maybe walk right by. Here's one right here. Down here? - Yeah. -

Bret

Playin' the difference between, we primarily have two morels in Minnesota, right? Yellows and blacks? Correct. Generally, you'll find blacks that started about mid-state and up and generally don't find many of any blacks maybe south of St. Cloud or so. -

Bret

And they're not as big as the yellows. No, they're not as big, they're shaped a little more like a cone or a witch's hat. They're more diminutive but I also think they pack a little more flavor, too. A fungus can be huge. The largest living organism in the world is the honey mushroom which is in a national forest in Washington and covers about three and a half square miles which is a single living organism that's probably a couple thousand years old. Wow. - So it's really fascinating when you learn just how much of the Earth is covered in fungus. Almost the entire Earth including Antarctica, including the North Pole, you know, places you would never imagine fungus exists in, it does. We pick over 50 species of mushrooms, we pick oh, probably 40 or 50 species of wild plants, berries, nuts, tubers, wild rice. Really anything that you've heard of. Couple years ago we were fortunate enough to find matsutake growing here in Minnesota for the first time ever, which is a highly prized mushroom that can sell for hundreds of dollars a pound, and especially in Asian countries. But yeah, it's surprising just the diversity of wild food products that our state has for us all. -

Bret

As a certified wild mushroom identification instructor, Mike leads fungi foraging tours and classes at Morrissey's Irish Pub. He also opened Forest to Fork Grocery in the new Keg and Case Market, a local food complex in Saint Paul's former Schmidt Brewery where he sells wild produce, including mushrooms grown at a 14-foot tall glass chamber. Keg and Case Market itself is really sort of a Disneyworld for foodies so if you're into food in any capacity, you're gonna be walkin' around with a smile on your face. (upbeat urban music) -

Bret

Mike's two businesses sponsor the annual Wild Food Fandango on the Keg and Case Market grounds where top chefs create culinary innovations from Gentleman Forager wild foods. Mike, it's here! The Wild Food Fandango. - It's here! Are you ready? - I'm ready, man! It's fantastic! Beautiful day! - Beautiful day! Tell our viewers what the Wild Food Fandango is. So we're celebrating springtime in Minnesota, we have all this fantastic wild-based food, foraged food, we have 14 chefs from around the cities here at some of the best restaurants comin' to lend their talents and create these really memorable dishes and have folks vote on it and in the end here, pretty soon, we're gonna give away the coveted Golden Morel. -

Bret

Yeah, that's a big tro-- Where'd the trophy come from? The trophy was made a couple years back for Morel Fest which became what is now the Wild Food Fandango so it's a traveling trophy. The chef wins it and keeps it until the next year and we see who takes it home again. -

Bret

Tell me about all these chefs that are here today. -

Mike

They're all clients of Gentleman Forager who are familiar with our products and really know how to utilize them in some fantastic ways. Alright, well, good luck today. Thanks, thanks so much. Had to come over and find out what you got goin' inside this grill right now because it smells delicious. You wanna take a look? It is delicious. Alright. - Absolutely. Okay, here we go, big reveal. There's a lot of smoke there but what I've got here is an Italian marinated grilled skirt steak. Really delicious, it's got an Italian seasoning on it that I made myself, I'm also servin' it up here today at Wild Food Fandango with a wild mushroom risotto. It's got a combination of brown beech, morel and baby shitake mushrooms as well as wild green garlic. Okay, all that wild stuff is great and obviously, that's part of why you're here. But I gotta tell you what. The seasoning this steak smells absolutely delicious. It really is. I'll tell ya, it's a really quick marinade. I own a company called Croix Valley Foods and what I do is I make seasonings for a living. This is what I call my Italian Barbecue Booster and it is like an all-purpose Italian seasoning. Put a little bit of that on there with some vegetable oil to kinda help it stick, it was a quick 30-minute marinade and it's like packed with power and flavor. Well, you got four left on here so I'll take 'em. Alright! (laughs) All for of 'em! Well, what do you guys got here today? We're doing crepes, you know? We're doing just like a crepe. It's stuffed with ramps, morel mushrooms, wild boar, fiddleheads, little brie and watercress there. Everything within the area of Minnesota besides the brie. You're working towards preservation when you enjoy a product like that. The fiddleheads, the ramps, you wanted that to come back, you wanna see that in the field and in the natural farm. It's a beautiful thing. Right now, with Jim Christiansen, he's got a restaurant called Heyday in uptown. We're at the Wild Food Fandango. What do you think of this whole shindig? It's great! They did a great job this year. Lots of chefs, lots of competition, great beer, good live music. Really good, really good. What are you servin' up today? -

Jim

I've taken a pasta salad, no pasta. We took big morels, shaved them, little vinaigrette, fresh cheese, organic cream. -

Bret

Let's just back up one second. Did you say pasta salad without the pasta? -

Jim

You don't need it. The morels, people want the morels. Isn't that just a salad at that point? It's a salad. It's a mushroom salad, okay? Yeah, it's a mushroom salad! I'll take a pasta salad, hold the pasta! People want pasta salads. People want pasta salads. Alright, how's it goin' over? You think you got a shot at winnin' the big trophy? I think so. We've been pumpin' the food out. I think we got everybody here so yeah, I think that's what's you wanna do. -

Bret

Nice job, well it looks delicious, congratulations. Good luck today. - Thank you! Thanks, guys. (upbeat urban music) -

Bret

Outside the chefs' tents, Vendors show off other wild creations. Happy Fish Aquaponics' owners Tonny and Terry Vang raise tilapia in a closed heated system and used the water to grow hydroponic vegetables that are sold at Forest to Fork. And we met Tevy Phann-Smith, whose Spinning Wylde shop has an unusual twist. What are we spinning here? What is this contraption? This is a cotton candy machine that was invented by a dentist! (Bret laughs) And we are spinning cotton candy in over 50 flavors. We make it from all organic cane sugar, plant-based dyes, and lots of fun toppings. Today, we're featuring about 15 flavors including nebrodini, mushroom cotton candy, and wild-- - Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Mushroom cotton candy. - Mushroom cotton candy and morel mushroom cotton candy, courtesy of the Gentleman Forager. Alright, so how do we work this thing? Well, we just throw an itty-bitty amount of sugar in there and it poofs up. Melts and the vertical flow, the fan blows it up and I catch it on a stick. A little bit of science and a little bit of magic. -

Bret

Alright, I like magic. -

Tevy

Let's try nebrodini over here. 'Kay. - Whoa! (upbeat urban music) Tell me what you think. This is... - Nebrodini. Nebrodini wild mushroom cotton candy. It's a family of the trumpet, I believe. Oh, yeah! That tasted great! (Tevy laughs) Smell it, smell it! - That's very good. I think it smells like soy sauce. It's really savory like it needs to be in a big bowl of udon or ramen. Got a little umbrella and everything. That's very good. I haven't had cotton candy in a long time. Does it taste like mushroom? Yep, well, kinda. Yeah. I don't know, I've never had nebrodini before. You need to try this stuff! After a day of tasting wild and wonderful dishes, it's time to see who will bring home the trophy. So I have the results here. Second place was Bonicelli Kitchen, Laura Bonicelli. (crowd cheers) Great job, Laura. But the number one dish will be taking home the fantastic Golden Morel Trophy. Coveted Golden Morel trophy. Daniel Cataldo took home the trophy this year from 925. Congatulations, Chef! (crowd clapping) -

Bret

The winning dish was Nettle Casonsei, a nettle pasta filled with morels, nebrodinis, ramps, green garlic and sheep milk ricotta. It's delicious. And while I enjoy morel foraging, I've never tried many of the ingredients the forest has to offer. Maybe next time I walk through the woods, I'll keep my eyes open for all these other food options available to anyone willing to search for them. (light urban music) -

Man

We get a lot of new deer in here every spring. And the people in Hutchinson, in the community truly appreciate those little fellas (chuckles) when they're around with all the spots on 'em. -

Man

And now this boat, we have some kind of vegetations and stuff. We try to remove it what we can by hand. (lively big band music) (inspirational piano music) In the early 1900s, wildlife was disappearing from the United States in an alarming rate. Hunters, conservationists and preservationists felt that major changes needed to take place. So hunting seasons were closed or more strictly managed, public lands and parks were created and groups of concerned citizens began forming clubs aimed at protecting wildlife. (inspirational piano music) It was first developed in 1910 when Sam G. Anderson, one of the founders of the club itself, the Gopher Campfire Club. He was an attorney here in the Hutchinson area and very well known nationally. And he had a sanctuary on his place out there and that eventually became, it was turned over to the Campfire itself and we've been in about three locations now. But this is the final one, is the 28 acres we have here on the Crow River, west of Hutchinson. It's a true conservation club. That was our whole motto was conservation. We don't like to call ourselves a sportsman's club, we'd rather call it a conservation club and that was the basis for it. The Gopher Campfires Conservation Club were very, very concerned about the fact that the wildlife had been decimated in the United States and the buffalo were gone, for instance, the white tailed deer didn't exist here anymore, and the water fowl were bein', eggs collect the settlers and you can't blame 'em when the settlers first came. It was their food supply! It was what they lived off of and they just slowly, over a period of time, everything was gone. -

Bret

Motivated by declining wildlife populations, the club was able to successfully grow the sanctuary into a prime destination for water fowl and a host of other wildlife to rest and recharge whether it's a migration pit stop or a permanent home. (quirky playful music) We've got deer, number one, that's our large animals. We had the elk at one time and we had buffalo. We get a lot of new deer in here every spring and the people in Hutchinson, in the community, truly appreciate those little fellas (chuckles) when they're around with all the spots on 'em. We've got turkeys, in the spring of the year, we get a lot of blue bills and we'll get some red heads, we get a pintail or two and then so forth and they'll stick around for a while but they don't seem to stay long enough to nest or anything. We've got nesting wood ducks. Couple of years ago we had a pair of fulvous tree ducks here. They're pretty unusual since they very seldom leave South Texas. We've also got birds of prey that stop in here all the time. There's a couple of eagles that we have around that will sit in here. Turkey vultures. They sit in the trees behind us here. There's about 10 of 'em that, every summer, that stay here all summer which is fine. They clean up the area. -

Bret

The most successful population in the sanctuary has been the Canada goose. The amount of geese that we have in here really varies in that there's been years when we've had 10 to 15,000 geese in here very easily through the whole fall. At least that amount and we've had everything from emperor geese to a few of 'em that have come through this area which is unusual, to the snows and blues and greater Canadas that are here now. And the greater Canadas have always been here in the sanctuary. They were part of the original sanctuary back in 1910. -

Virgil

This is one of the few areas that actually kept that species from going extinct. Rochester and Hutchinson. -

Bret

Perhaps the best perk for sanctuary tenants is enjoying a complimentary food supply. Believe it or not, this bale right here was a full sized bale two weeks ago. And (chuckles) the deer have really been enjoying this hay. Those are our primary food sources that we put in here. Round bales and then we put corn. We feed corn mainly for the water fowl. -

Bret

While the Gopher Campfire Club Wildlife Sanctuary has been a huge conservation success, maintaining the 28-acre property has presented some challenges as well. Right now we're workin' on keepin' some water open in the winter, we're workin' on a new aeration system we're gonna try out. And then the next problem we're facing is the water levels. We had a well in here in the past and it's quit working so we need to figure out how to keep our water levels up. So that's the big concern right now. Chronic wasting disease has become a big issue as well it should have. Years ago, we used to make a substantial amount of our revenue from selling deer in here. And there was a company down in Texas that purchased most of our deer. We actually de-populated our whole herd. We had about 15, 20 deer in here. We totally, unfortunately, de-populated the whole thing and started over. Since then we've tested several of them and they're all negative to CWD. (inspirational music) -

Bret

Despite these challenges, and relying solely on club funding and public donations, the sanctuary has been a huge success in the City of Hutchinson. It means a lot to me and it's one of the premier attractions that the City of Hutchinson has got and in fact, at one time it was about the only one that was listed on AAA maps to see in Hutchinson when you're traveling through the area. The site here itself has got a track along the river out there for running and so forth. At noon here, there's a lot of people show up and just eat their lunch here and watch the animals and we get a lot of outside people that show up. We're just in the process now of getting the state of Minnesota to give us a sign on the highway up here that will list the sanctuary as being here. We've never had that before. -

Virgil

It's a vehicle for a lot of people to see some wildlife close up that they normally wouldn't be able to. -

Bret

And a future for both the Gopher Campfire Club and Sanctuary is looking up. We've got people coming up all the time that are working at it. We've got our board now who's got another couple three young fellas on it that is good. 'Cause I can't stick around forever and neither can Virgil here. We'd like to but at 83, I'm in trouble. (laughs) But we got a lot of young people coming up and the club is more viable now than it's ever been. It's been a huge staple in Hutchinson here. Everybody knows the sanctuary, everybody's came down here to feed the ducks at some point in their life. It's great for kids, it's great for the whole family just to come and learn about the water fowl, the deer. To see these deer up close and personal, a lot of people don't ever get to do that so it's a great opportunity for everybody. (inspirational music) (lively big band music) (quirky orchestral music) -

Bret

Green Lake in Central Minnesota is infested with zebra mussels and Eurasian milfoil. While it's difficult to do much about invasive species once they're in the lake, the DNR is aggressively working to keep those unwelcome hitchhikers from entering other lakes. So at the lake's public access in Spicer, watercraft inspectors are on hand, checking and decontaminating boats everyday, six a.m. to eight p.m. from fishing opener until late fall. Inspector Jabran Mustafa and Josh Manzke check boats both before and after they enter the lake. A lot of time, we just run our hands around the boat, the hull and stuff. Zebra mussels are just so tiny. They're microscopic when they are babies, the eggs. So you can't see 'em. When the zebra mussels gets a little bit grown up, they feel like sand paper. So we just run our hands to have that feel. If it's sand, we have to look closely and we drain the (mumbles). Anything that have bait, like minnows, leeches, anything with water, they're required to change the water. And they have to drain that water. Anything that carried the water, we need to make sure they drain, dump, dry, basically. -

Bret

Boats with infestations must be decontaminated. Jabran asks others to keep their boats out of the water five to seven days to completely dry or like angler Harley Davenport, they can voluntarily go through the decon unit. Since Harley fishes four lakes in Kandiyohi County and Lake of the Woods, he doesn't wanna risk spreading exotic species. When we're talkin' about the local area like this and you fish multiple lakes like that, how important is it to keep AIS or invasive species in line? I think that's real important and that's why we're standing on this yellow mat today because there is zebra mussels here and in fact, just a few minutes ago when another boat came out, the inspector found a little weed which was (mumbles) but it had one bigger zebra mussel and probably 20 or 30 little ones so they are here and even though other lakes are getting the zebra mussels, we're trying to keep 'em out. So when you see a decontamination station, are you happy when you see one? Yes. (clears throat) Some of the people say it's gonna take me extra time but really, as I pulled out, decontaminated and cleaned up, I was ready to go in about 20 minutes. I guess 20 minutes worth my time is worth it. -

Jabran

In this boat, we have some kind of vegetations and stuff. We try to remove it what we can by hand and we'll do a 140 degrees water, low flow, flush. You'll get rid of all the weeds, and in case any zebra mussels, we soak it and then hot water for about 10 seconds. This boat has a, a plug that's an auto plug so we don't need to have it drained out. Normally if it's a regular plug, we have to pull it out so that it drains. Today I had some people who are set in their ways. And they say, "We never had to do this." Well, we never had to put seat belts either. Now it's the law. So this is the law. And there are fines from a $100 to a $1000. (inspirational music) -

Announcer

Funding for this segment has been provided by the Aquatic Invasive Species Task Forces of Big Stone, Laq Qui Parle, Yellow Medicine, Kandiyohi, Meeker and Wright Counties. (light music) -

Announcer

Funding for this program was provided by The Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund. Safe Basements of Minnesota, your basement waterproofing and foundation repair specialists since 1990. Peace of mind is a safe basement. Diamond Willow Advanced Care Assisted Living, providing custom homes with smaller settings designed especially for high care needs. Live Wide Open, telling stories of why people have chosen to live wide open in West Central Minnesota. More at LiveWideOpen.com. Western Minnesota Prairie Waters, quietly beautiful and wildly connected. -

Director

Alright, whenever you're ready. Hang on. (Bret coughs) Where's the stack? Is it over here? Here? (Bret grunts rhythmically)