The hunt for this delicacy starts by the middle of September to end by the end of January. Camomplin organizes hunts for a small fee. We go hunting with a trained dog and his master, the “trifulau” for a few hours .
Camomplin organizes such expedition upon request. But let’s talk about the white truffle so that you’ll be better prepared for hunting them. Let’s also give you a few hints on how to prepare a meal based on white truffles.
Truffles are subterranean fungi which grow only in close association with trees. Their strong smell has been appreciated for centuries, and has delighted the tables of royalty, high prelates and people rich enough to be able to afford this delicacy. These include Churchill, the English Prime Minister during world War II, Ronald Reagan, the President of the US of A, and, in retrospect, the one guy responsible for the financial crash of 2008,  Marilyn Monroe, an American idol and actress, and Valeria Marini, a less known Italian actress. It can cost up to six thousand Euros per Kilograms. One of the biggest ever found, if not the biggest, weighted a little more than one Kilo and was fetched by a London restaurateurs for US$ 52,000: the news was reported by ANSA, the Italian news agency, the 22nd of November 1954.
This was a monster of a truffle.
The vast majority found today weight between ten and forty grams. Twenty grams of the thing, cut in very fine slices, will properly smother your eggs, sunny side up.
Although it grows all year round in symbiosis with the roots of oaks, hazels, poplars or beeches, it is ripe, and at its best, from the middle of October until the end of January. This is when men and dogs roam the woods of “Le Rocche”, or the woods of Vezza d’Alba, day and night, in search of the precious fungi.
Truffles are very smelly when ripe. Their smell permeates the ground around which they grow to finally reach the surface. Trained dogs can smell the presence of the delicacy, which can be fifty centimeters or more underground, locate them precisely, and dig them out.
There is no particular breed of dogs which is deemed best for truffle hunting: any dog curious enough to wanting to play with its trainer will become a good hunter of truffles. Dogs are trained when young  by hiding small pieces of truffle which they need to smell and find. Each time they succeed they are rewarded, generally with a croquette or anything else edible to them. It may take up to three months to properly train a dog.
Hunting for truffles is a man and dog affair, where the man constantly prods the dog to search for truffles in places where he knows there must be some, to then briskly walk away to other such places where the dog is prodded again. The dog must be constantly prodded to look for truffles: otherwise it would rather mark the area as his, by pissing on top of other dogs’ piss: but since there would be no reward for pissing around it ultimately spends most of its time looking for truffles. When a truffle is ripe a good dog will smell it: it will then start digging it out, ferociously, with both of its paws. This is when the truffle hunter will call the dog back, and dig the ground himself with a small spoon-like tool, carefully scraping the dirt around the place where the truffle should be, very attentive not to damage the fungi. Once the truffle is dug out it is stored in a special pouch, a small leather bag held around the chest, and the dog is rewarded for having done a good job. A truffle hunting excursion may last all night: the man will walk up to fifteen kilometres, and the dogs at least trice that.
Two important things must be said about truffle hunting.
The first one is that no truffle hunting dog will ever get fat hunting truffles.
The second one is that truffle hunting is done mostly at night. This is true but not because it is easier to keep secret the places where truffle are found from other hunters, but because a “trifulau”  generally has a full time job keeping him busy in daylight.
The truffle hunter is called “trifulau” in the local dialect, and a truffle is a “trifula”.
White truffles are sliced over eggs, sunny side up or easy over, Carpaccio of veal, and pasta: anything, really, which taste and aroma is delicate enough so as to enhance the strong aroma, but mostly the taste, of the white tuber.
Truffle hunts are organized by Camomplin only for small groups of people who stay at Camomplin’s vacation homes. These forays are done with professional hunters in the woods they go hunting in real life: This to say that we will find the withe variety most of the time, but also none from timeto time ! Hunts are organized for a fee. You may book this activity once here.