The hunt for Oregon’s funkiest edible jewels involves four-legged friends

Charles Lefevre’s furry coworkers are nose-deep in damp earth, inhaling notes of garlic and cedar and diesel. Coats wet and muddied, they paw at their pungent, knobbly prey. 

Dante, 12, is the grandfather of Luca, almost 4. The two Lagotto Romagnolos, one of the premier truffle dog breeds, are descended from a long, unbroken line of truffle hunters, Lefevre said. Like all truffle dogs are trained to do, they have the time of their lives playing this sensory-rich game.

Below the canopy of Douglas firs are wagging tales, calls of “Goooood boy!” and the promise of treats with every truffle unearthed. 

Despite the elusiveness and challenges of the industry, Lefevre is on a mission to draw more people – and dogs – into the harvest for Oregon truffles. As Oregon’s reputation and industry for wine has grown, Lefevre believes the state also has the right climatic and culinary conditions to become a truffle destination. 

It’s why he founded the Oregon Truffle Festival and a truffle cultivation company called New World Truffieres. 

On hunts like this, Lefevre is focused solely on his two pups. Every time they alert, the truffle veteran drops to his wader-clad knees – often hundreds of times per hunt – and digs up each muddied lump from decomposing forest litter. He places it in a cut-out plastic carton and quickly moves on to the next, ensuring his dogs don’t damage the truffles with their claws or appetites.

Lefevre leases this patch of private land in Lane County, so rich with Oregon white truffles that anyone who joins him on hunts is sworn to not disclose the location. 

“Poaching is a big deal,” he said.

On a recent Monday in February, Lefevre, Dante and Luca harvested truffles for festival-related events the coming weekend. Because the native whites have thinner skins and reach peak aroma within a few days of harvesting, the trio must gather many in a short period of time. 

As soon as they trot past a clearing of tall grass and power lines, Dante and Luca plug their noses into the dark, promising woods. 

The truffle’s most enthusiastic ambassadors

A few weeks ago, the Joriad North American Truffle Dog Championship had a first in its 11-year history. It had to go to a tiebreaker. 

The Joriad is one of the Oregon Truffle Festival’s most anticipated events. The winning dog is determined by most truffles found in one hour, but this year, two pups had 15 truffles each: Lazlo, a 2-year-old Lagotto Romagnolo, and Daisy, a 10-year-old Terrier mix. 

Daisy and her handler, Jessie Barnes, started out foraging for other edible mushrooms. Barnes wasn’t drawn to truffles specifically.

It’s the kind of step Lefevre wants to see more truffle hobbyists take.  

Oregon’s slow shift to truffle dogs

Back in 1995, when Lefevre discovered his first truffle on some timber-converted farmland, trained dogs were not the norm for harvesting truffles in Oregon or anywhere west of Tennessee.

Before canines, Oregon truffle harvesters traditionally used rakes to dredge up truffles. Rakers relied on their knowledge of ideal growing conditions and on the foraging prowess of truffle-hungry rodents, as disturbed soil is a sign of a prized fungi patch. 

While leaving some ground around the tree undisturbed can help protect the fragile surroundings, raking is generally frowned upon: It can damage both the tree roots and the truffle’s delicate underground network, called the mycelium. Sometimes, getting everything isn’t beneficial; in fact, raked truffles fetch a lower price than dog-harvested ones due to quality control.

As truffle dogs became more popular over the last two decades, state and federal officials made moves to restrict or ban raking in Oregon. The Bureau of Land Management in Salem, for example, allows “trained truffle dog-assisted harvesting” only in designated northwest Oregon lands. 

Lefevre called raking an “indiscriminate” method.

“It would be like picking tomatoes blindfolded,” he said. “There’s no way to determine ripe versus unripe truffles.”

A dog’s extraordinary sense of smell can differentiate between unripe, overripe and perfectly ripe truffles. They help prevent hunters from digging up immature truffles (which will never ripen if harvested too early) and ruining future yields. The more training a dog receives, the more sophisticated their nose becomes, and the more truffle patches remain intact after harvest.

Lefevre’s first step to cultivating a truffle dog population in Oregon was opening up Yellow Pages. He found someone who specialized in scent training and gave her a call. The legion of truffle dogs grew from there, from a few dozen to now hundreds across the state. 

“Any kind of dog can be trained for [truffle hunting], but not every dog is going to be good at it,” Lefevre said.

Just as the truffle has a mycorrhizal association with its tree host, feeding off its sugars in exchange for helping the tree absorb water and nutrients, a dog and its handler also share a symbiotic, interconnected relationship. The more enthusiastically a handler responds to their pup finding a truffle, the more the dog wants to play. Treats are key.

“Make sure it’s the most exciting thing ever when they find it for you,” Barnes said. “I give Daisy high-value rewards. I was giving her hotdogs, but I switched over to chicken because it’s healthier.” 

European-born, Oregon-raised

Oregon is now home not only to its native truffles but to one of the most lucrative edible fungi in the world: the Périgord black truffle, which can exceed $1,300 per pound.

The state is so fertile for truffles – there are hundreds of native species in Oregon, though only four are edible – that Lefevre named the dog championship The Joriad after the official state soil of Oregon, jory. 

It signals his commitment not just to elevating the reputation of Oregon native truffles, but the lush Willamette Valley itself, to that of premier truffle destination.

Périgords are native to southern Europe but are now cultivated in North America, in large part due to Lefevre’s company, New World Truffrieres. 

New World sells Périgord-inoculated tree seedlings – basically a built-in symbiotic relationship between tree and fungi – to companies like Cartwright Truffiere in Lane County, one of Oregon’s first truffle orchards. The specialized trees, usually oak or douglas fir, are planted orchard-style and usually fruit several years after the seedlings are planted.

By the wag of their dog Perry’s tail, co-owners Simon and Linnet Cartwright harvest these farmed underground mushrooms with confidence. Over the years, the Brittany breed has developed a library of odors specific to alerting for ripe orchard-grown truffles. It’s one of the most necessary and fruitful skillsets on the farm. 

“We might have 100 truffles, but only five of them will be ripe,” Cartwright said.

Simon Cartwright first notices an excited head turn from Perry, 10, when a Périgord is nearby. The pup will cross the odor path and follow the scent, pointing his nose to the buried treasure.

Cartwright spends anywhere from under 60 seconds to 25 minutes carefully digging out a single truffle. 

The conditions between an orchard and a native setting may require different harvesting methods, but for the dogs, the game remains the same. 

“If it’s ripe, we make it rain treats,” Simon Cartwright said. 

Native truffles are the real thing, too

Oregon truffles still don’t fetch the same price or prestige as Périgords and the rest of their expensive European counterparts.

“There seemed to be consensus that Oregon truffles were inferior to European species, so they were marketed as an inexpensive substitute to the ‘real’ thing,” Lefevre said, adding that Oregon truffles are more powerful and complex than their reputation initially let on. 

He created the Oregon Truffle Festival two decades ago to, as he put it, “redeem the reputation of the native Oregon truffle.” He wants more people to breathe in its garlic breath and shave its musk and earth over the most buttery and fatty dishes: risotto, creamy pasta, fondue.

“The aroma that blasted out of my fridge was Oregon truffles,” Lefevre said. “When they were really ripe, they overpowered the European species.” 

‘It was proof’

The dogs are quick gatherers. The truffles are slow-growing. Both are finicky and worth the effort.

Though their coats are dense and curly enough for the rain, Dante and Luca don’t always enjoy truffling in the rain. They slow down a bit, still expecting treats. 

Lefevre knows when to push and when to call it.

The pair reached a record last year, finding over 900 truffles – about 16 pounds – in three hours and 40 minutes. That’s one truffle every 23 seconds per dog. Lefevre got on his knees about 500 times that day. 

Today, the container has plenty of room for more truffles. His stopwatch still going, Lefevre gently nudges his coworkers onward, treats in hand.

“The whole experience should be positive,” he says while Dante takes a quick break. “It should be the most fun thing in their lives.” 

Further south in Lane County, the Cartwrights are done harvesting their Périgolds for the season. After working his nose full-time, Perry is back to full-time cuddler status. Similar to owning dogs, cultivating truffles is a lifestyle – as in, don’t get a dog solely for truffling.

During peak Périgord season, Perry and other orchard pups go hunting a couple times a day in 45-minute increments. The Cartwrights spend another two hours digging out the truffles, cleaning, grading and packaging for distribution. A speck of dirt or an insect nibble may render the truffle commercially unusable, or at least slash its value. 

Beginning in 2009, the Cartwrights methodically staggered their truffle tree plantings. Out of the 720 trees in Cartwright Truffiere, about 300 are now fruiting. The lifespan of each tree is about 25 to 30 years once the fungus’s underground network is established.

“It takes time,” Cartwright said. “The mycelium moves through the soil at a very slow rate.”

On the same day they planted their last tree – five years after they began – the first Cartwright Périgord fruited.

Simon remembers it down to the minute: 10:22 a.m. on Feb. 22, 2014. One of their dog handlers pulled out the truffle the moment they buried the final seedling. 

“It was swollen and ugly but it was proof,” Cartwright said of the truffle. “It was unbelievable.”