When I am in the woods no matter what I am hunting, I always keep an eye on the ground for Ginseng. In the past I have normally made enough selling the Ginseng to cover cost of licence,shells,clothes and sometimes get lucky and have a few bucks left. How many others on the board do the same, and have you found much this season? Also does anyone know what the buyers are paying this year?
Ginseng ,, kind of OT
- Thread starter JoseWong
- Start date
Well,i hate to tell you guys,but ginseng has gone off already.You would be pretty lucky to find any this time of year.Since they made a season on hunting it,i haven't hunted it much anymore.I'm not a 100% sure,i think it was going for around $300 a pound this year.
WPH,I don't think i got any pictures to show,but to your question,"yes you can sale it." It is legale to do so.
WPH,I don't think i got any pictures to show,but to your question,"yes you can sale it." It is legale to do so.
nightwatchman
New member
i used to dig gensing when i was in high school.. an old man next door to me used to raise an enormous patch behind his house.. he always told me if anything ever happened to him that i could either keep the patch going or dig it up.( i was pretty close to the old guy, hunting and fishing with him for years growing up) my junior year of high school, the old man passed away and that fall i went in to the patch to just look at it. i had never seen it before but he told me exactly where it was at.. OMG.. you guys have no idea how big it was... there were 3 and 4 prong standing in patches everywhere that looked like corn fields they were so thick.. you could take a shovel and start digging and pull up 4-8 oz roots like it was nothing.. i had always seen the roots he would dig (select dig) to give him some extra spending money and knew they were huge but he was digging the small ones.. anyway, the first year i dug in the patches i just dug the largest ones and pulled the berries off and threw them back in the ground and covered them up.. i dug $2,600.00 worth of ginseng and goldenseal in alittle over 6 hours.. i didnt go back that year and waited till next year to hit it again.. the next year i dug about 1500.00 and still wasnt touching everything i could have.. anyway, the old root buyer i was taking it to had told me the previous year that the ginseng i had brought him was the largest amount of root anyone had brought him in 30 years.. ( i walked in his shop with two school duffle bags full of dried ginseng) and this was when the prices were pushing 500-600 dollars a pound..back in the early 90's..
anyway, to make a long story short, the following year i went in to dig alittle more and to my sorrow someone had snuck in and dug the entire place out of all the large roots. at this time there wasnt much left coming up and they had been there early in the season before berries came ripe.. i was really dissappointed but to this day the patch is still producing ginseng.. if i get hard up for cash or want a new toy in the fall i walk in the patch and dig for a few hours and ill usually come home with 100-200 dollars worth of seng... dry..
ill never forget the first time i walked thru the root buyers door and he opened the duffle bags up... he about crapped his pants.. the first words out of his mouth was "who's patch did you dig".. he knew there was no way i could find that much seng in the wild.. but he never hesitated to buy it either... i think he knew he would make alot more then me..
anyway, to make a long story short, the following year i went in to dig alittle more and to my sorrow someone had snuck in and dug the entire place out of all the large roots. at this time there wasnt much left coming up and they had been there early in the season before berries came ripe.. i was really dissappointed but to this day the patch is still producing ginseng.. if i get hard up for cash or want a new toy in the fall i walk in the patch and dig for a few hours and ill usually come home with 100-200 dollars worth of seng... dry..
ill never forget the first time i walked thru the root buyers door and he opened the duffle bags up... he about crapped his pants.. the first words out of his mouth was "who's patch did you dig".. he knew there was no way i could find that much seng in the wild.. but he never hesitated to buy it either... i think he knew he would make alot more then me..
FordTruckGuySTX
New member
what does ginseng look like? i've never been digging for it but would like to
I wouldn't quit my job to look for Ginseng if I were you.
It is getting a little late in the season now but if you know what to look for you can still find a few bunches. I found a couple last week. But once the leaves fall off that will be the end of it until next year.
Best way I can tell you to learn to find Sang is to try to hook up with someone who has dug the stuff for years. It is sort of like Muskie fishing 10,000 casts and you catch a musky. Well you look at 10,000 weeds and you finally find a plant of Genseng. There are a lot of other plants that kind of look like it. I have dug a root and gave the leaves and stem to the guy I was with and they still would walk over a plant and never spot it. But once you find that first plant you will be hooked for life. For no matter where you are in a woods,State Park or just a woodsy back yard you will catch yourself eyeing the ground. I grew up in Southern West Virginia in the 50-60's and I think I got addicted to the stuff when I was about 8-10 years old . One word of caution, seems Sang and Rattlers go hand in hand, so if you are in rattler country use a little caution,ok
Here is a link that will pretty much tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the stuff but was afraid to ask.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/cmns
field(SUBJ+@od1(Ginseng++Panax+quinquefolia+))
It is getting a little late in the season now but if you know what to look for you can still find a few bunches. I found a couple last week. But once the leaves fall off that will be the end of it until next year.
Best way I can tell you to learn to find Sang is to try to hook up with someone who has dug the stuff for years. It is sort of like Muskie fishing 10,000 casts and you catch a musky. Well you look at 10,000 weeds and you finally find a plant of Genseng. There are a lot of other plants that kind of look like it. I have dug a root and gave the leaves and stem to the guy I was with and they still would walk over a plant and never spot it. But once you find that first plant you will be hooked for life. For no matter where you are in a woods,State Park or just a woodsy back yard you will catch yourself eyeing the ground. I grew up in Southern West Virginia in the 50-60's and I think I got addicted to the stuff when I was about 8-10 years old . One word of caution, seems Sang and Rattlers go hand in hand, so if you are in rattler country use a little caution,ok
Here is a link that will pretty much tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the stuff but was afraid to ask.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/cmns
field(SUBJ+@od1(Ginseng++Panax+quinquefolia+))