Finding Truffles
Truffles are anything but easy to find. They are pretty difficult to find and as a result are very expensive. In the year 1994, the black truffles sold reportedly for $350 to $500 per pound. Truffles are anything but easy to find. They are pretty difficult to find and as a result are very expensive. In the year 1994, the black truffles sold reportedly for $350 to $500 per pound. In United States of America the edible truffles are found and collected in various forests of Oregon as well as in Washington. In Europe, one can find most truffles in France and Italy.
Truffle hunters across Italy and France use pigs (the pigs are also called truffle-hogs) along with many mixed-breed dogs in order to sniff out truffles. However the dogs are preferred to pigs as the pigs love to eat up the truffles while dogs are purely carnivorous. These truffle hunters hold a certain type of staff and he uses the staff and forces the pig to back off thereby preventing it from eating up the truffle. There are many truffle dogs that are trained in Italy employing a large number of methodical steps. The dog is primarily taught to retrieve a rubber ball then a piece of smelly Gorgonzola cheese is substituted. In the next step, the cheese is hidden and thus the dog is forced to sniff it out. In the final step a small truffle replaces the cheese.
There are a few laws that restrict absolute collection of truffles. The truffle collectors are both tested and licensed. You need to be a member and only as a member of the cooperative you can collect truffles else you can be arrested for collecting truffles from other cooperative truffle beds. Thus as we can see, collecting truffles does require a few laws and as a truffle collector you need to abide by them.