Outdoors | Find your huckleberry heaven in the Northwest — one precious berry at a time

How do you identify a huckleberry picker in the woods?

Answer: They have purple fingers, a purple tongue, and are stooped over from a sore back.

Huckleberry picking is not for the faint of heart. Whether you forage beside a dusty gravel road or along a shaded trail, a serious commitment of time and energy is required.

Individuals whose principal recreational footwear involves a pair of flip flops need not apply.

Biting insects, scratchy bushes, uneven terrain, and the occasional bear come into play. If friends, relatives, or children must be bribed to help fill your bucket, leave them at home. Complainers do not make good companions.

One question that often comes up is, “What’s a polite distance to maintain from other pickers?”

I can assure that strangers prefer that you stay out of sight.

Case in point: Nancy and I once encountered a woman who came into the same huckleberry patch from a different direction.

She looked up when our footsteps mingled and said, “Can I help you?”

Although her words were polite, the tone was combative. We moved on.

When picking with others, I suggest you stay within shouting distance. Believe me when I say some folks don’t know which direction the sun comes up or the difference between uphill and downhill.

A practical issue relates to the size of a container used to gather and hold berries. Most pickers prefer a quart-size receptacle. Once filled, your harvest can be transferred to a larger cooler for transfer home. Any bucket smaller than a quart requires too many trips to the cooler to be efficient. A larger bucket will likely lead to tedium.

Huckleberries don’t move around like walleye do in the Columbia River, but a patch that yields abundant berries one year might not the next.

Which begs the question, “When do you leave a patch to seek a new patch?”

In the Blues, a harvest of three to four cups per hour is a reasonable goal. Anything less, consider moving on. That said, seasoned anglers don’t leave fish to find fish. The same advice goes for huckleberry picking.

It’s invariable that one or two berries will hit the ground when you reach for a handful and knock loose more than you can grasp. In this case, ignore your screwup and keep picking unless you spill half a bucket in which case I scoop up as many as I can and sort the dirt and debris out later.

An argument can be made whether to either strip bushes clean or harvest the largest berries. Optimum foraging theory suggests it’s best to pick as many berries as you can as fast as you can with the minimum of effort. Going with this concept, I reserve high grading for the slow walk back to my vehicle at the end of the day.

Use one hand to pull leaves aside to reveal hidden berries, but by all means, pick with both hands if you have the dexterity. Strapping a bucket to your waist or on a string hung low around the neck helps in this regard.

Another case in point: huckleberries are too precious to waste.

An acquaintance recently shared how her younger brother once dumped a quart of huckleberries into a bowl of pancake batter. Their mother was horrified. She admonished him and made him pick them all out.

Berry season

Huckleberry season arrived early to the Blue Mountains following several weeks of hot weather.

Reports of ripe berries at 5,000-foot elevation hit the airways in mid-July. With luck, north facing slopes and higher elevations of the Blues will remain available for harvest through early August.

This past weekend I drove 120 miles on rutted gravel and pock-marked asphalt roads to forage for huckleberries. A far less painful endeavor than watching the Mariners strike out 15 times, for sure.

My window of opportunity was short, but my reward was two quarts of the finest Blue Mountain huckleberries a person could hope for.

For those who roam farther afield, Mount Adam huckleberries are reportedly, “as big as marbles,” while the diminutive coastal variety can also fill a pail.

If I behave myself, Nancy will bake me a huckleberry pie. No one makes a more flakey crust.

“It’s the Crisco,” she says. On years when huckleberries were abundant, my Aunt Bea opted for making a batch of huckleberry wine.

Mom stretched out her oft-meager supply with huckleberry cream pie, a recipe that requires only a cup of berries.

When picking is lean, I sprinkle them onto pancakes batter that has been spooned on a hot griddle, one precious berry at a time.

Dennis Dauble is author of five books about fish and fishing, along with his latest, A Rustic Cabin. His website is DennisDaubleBooks.com.