Violence Mushrooms In Forests Guns, Booze, Money Create Gold Rush Atmosphere For Pickers

It didn’t take long for the other mushroom pickers to move out of the campground loop after a Cambodian immigrant was arrested for shooting his wife in a drunken rage.

Left in the dust under the lodgepole pines were the tracks of the van the couple slept in, two red flags marking where police found spent .22-caliber shells, red incense sticks burned to appease the spirit of the dead woman, and the screw-off tops of six bottles of booze.

Guns and booze are as pervasive in this camp high in the Cascade Range as the sweet smell of the cooking oil used by the Cambodian, Laotian and Hmong immigrants who make up the bulk of the pickers living here.

Mix in millions of dollars in cash paid out to the pickers who come to the junction each night to sell their matsutake mushrooms, and you have a raw, violent gold rush atmosphere.

Vastly outnumbered by groups of heavily armed pickers, U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers have become wary of disarming people and have begun traveling in pairs. The Forest Service also has boosted the number of officers patrolling the area to eight.

Last year, gunfire was practically a nightly occurrence. The forests are quieter this year, but so far there have been three shootings that resulted in criminal charges, including the slaying that sent pickers looking for new places to pitch their tents.

Matsutake mushrooms, which can sell for hundreds of dollars apiece as a traditional food in Japan, grow in pine forests that stretch from British Columbia to Mexico. Thousands of people follow the harvest, sometimes making thousands of dollars a day. From August until the snow falls, Crescent Lake Junction is a favorite spot.

The mushroom rush hit here in 1989 and draws 2,000 pickers or more each fall, said Jerry Smith, specialty sales officer for the Chemult Ranger District on the Winema National Forest.

Last year, buyers in makeshift wooden shacks paid $12 million in cash for matsutakes, he said. The Forest Service sold 3,200 picking permits for $194,000.

“Some people make a great deal of money,” Smith said. “Some are fortunate to make gas money.”

Even early in the season, when there are only about 700 pickers, they far outnumber the 50 or so residents of Crescent Lake Junction, a wide spot along Oregon Highway 58 about 70 miles southeast of Eugene where a motel, tavern, and a few restaurants serve visitors to nearby mountain lakes and a ski area.

The extra business is welcome, but some residents are nervous about all the guns. Some are afraid to go into the woods during mushroom season.

The pickers drive out of camp at dawn each day in their 4-wheel-drive pickups. They walk the forest floor searching for the cracks and bulges in the blanket of dried pine needles that means a mushroom is sprouting underneath. Most of the license plates are from Washington state and California.

At night they go to the junction to sell. The 25 buyers have built bare wood stands, where they quickly grade the mushrooms, squeeze the stems to check for worms, and weigh them. The pickers warm themselves around fires built in old washing machine drums as they check out prices and wait.

Torry Culp told pickers he was paying “10, 10, five, five, and three.” That meant he was paying $10 a pound for No. 1s and No. 2s, $5 a pound for No. 3s and No. 4s, and $3 a pound for No. 5s.

Another buyer was getting most of the action by offering $12 for No. 1s.

“It’s just a game we play to get the mushrooms,” Culp said.

Everything is done in cash. An Asian buyer wearing a black leather jacket and a Harley-Davidson kerchief on his head wore a leather fanny pack bulging with bills to pay pickers.

Last year, when the picking was going big, Culp said he and his brother went through $90,000 a night, sometimes having to hand out IOUs when they ran out of cash.

In response to last year’s gunfire in the makeshift pickers’ camp, the Forest Service built a special camp run by a concessionaire. A series of small camps called pods stretches across three miles of forest. Cambodians camp with other Cambodians and Laotians camp with other Laotians, easing the tensions that develop when ethnic groups mix.

Forest Service officers check pickers for permits and concealed weapons during the day, and cruise through the campground at night.

“Patience is paying off. These folks are learning and we are having a much better season than we have in the past,” said B.J. Wood, a law enforcement officer for the Deschutes National Forest.

A group of pickers chatting and smoking cigarettes said they feel much safer this year with the extra officers and the more structured camp.

“Before, same as Khmer Rouge camp last year,” said Klap Soben, a former Cambodian soldier now living in Tacoma.

But tensions can still run high. While Wood was checking the permits of a group of Laotians sitting beside a logging road eating their lunch, a shot rang out just yards away. A white 4-wheel-drive pickup then sped by. Wood chased the two young men inside - he figures they were probably local youths, rather than pickers - but lost them in the maze of logging roads.

Later that night, two men sidled up as Wood chatted with a group drinking malt liquor around a campfire next to a tent where officers suspected illegal gambling. He spotted handguns on both of them.

“Now’s not the time to take them down,” he said afterward.

Visiting Portland police investigators have found evidence of some gang presence in camp, Wood said.

Chatting with friends outside a tent neatly built of blue tarps stretched over lodgepole pine saplings, Soben could have been back in one of the refugee camps many pickers once lived in overseas. Dressed in camouflage fatigues, he sat on a bench he built from peeled lodgepole pine saplings lashed together with cotton string.

“When guy drunk, they don’t talk straight and they fight,” said Ron Chhoeun, a former Cambodian soldier now living in Tacoma. To illustrate his point, he moved his arms like snakes.

“Right now, we know not good for money. When we find money, maybe there be lots of beer,” he added with a laugh.

Even with the picking slow, there is money for booze. A look inside a Dumpster near a pair of tents revealed dozens of empty bottles of Night Train Express, a cheap fortified wine.

Trach Sarp, 38, of Yreka, Calif., was killed by a single shot to her chest. Her husband, Dam Rath, 41, drank a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of MD 20-20, a fortified wine, while arguing with her and finally got out his .22-caliber rifle and shot her, Wood said.

Rath is in jail awaiting trial.