1. Make a positive identification using more than one source wherever possible. Do not eat mushrooms with any features that contradict the description. Contact a mushroom expert or club if you are not sure. "When in doubt, throw it out!"

2. Only pick specimens with opened caps. Mushrooms can easily be misidentified in the button stage.

3. Use every aspect of the physical structure for identification including a spore print. Spore prints should be made on black or white paper or glass.

4. Be able to distinguish a mushroom species from its close relatives.

5. Learn what the deadly species look like and the symptoms of poisoning.

6. Avoid picking "little brown mushrooms" and difficult to identify or poisonous species like amanita, galerina, entoloma, and cortinarius. Beginners should also avoid lepiota, lactarius and russula species.

7. Avoid boletes with red pores that stain blue. Blue staining mushrooms should always raise a caution flag although a few can be eaten. Black staining mushrooms are best avoided too.

8. Keep your known edibles separate from unknown species. Any unknown mushroom is possibly dangerous.

9. Avoid polluted, treated, or sprayed areas. Weed-less lawns should be avoided. Fruit tree orchards should be avoided unless you know for sure they haven't been sprayed. Pesticide residues can remain in the soil for many years. Possibly decades. Don't pick next to busy paved roadways. There could still be lead in the soil from leaded gasoline we used to burn and cadmium from tire rubber dust. On busy roadways pollution spreads from cars in a way similar to the dust cloud behind a cattle stampede.

10. Realize that there are no simple rules of thumb about edibility such as  "if it stains a silver spoon...." or other generalizations.

11. Always cook your mushrooms thoroughly. There is bacteria in the outdoors and you could get sick from something entirely unrelated to the mushroom.

12. Only consume fresh specimens. Older specimens may be spoiling.

13. Chew them well and don't overdo it . 

14. Try one new species at a time eating only a small amount at first retaining a sample of the new species in case of poisoning.

15. When fall rolls around and the hunting seasons begin, wear hunter orange in the woods at all times!

As with all rules and descriptions there are always exceptions. Size of mushrooms in particular can be quite variable. I have been puzzled on quite a number of occasions by mushrooms that were much larger than descriptions indicate. Every once in a while you will find 12 inch or larger boletes, horse mushrooms, oysters or others. I have learned that a 10 inch platterful or blewit is definitely possible. 2006 was a wet year and chanterelles commonly had 4-6 inch caps. It can throw you so realize that size can be much greater than field guide parameters suggest.

The chart below is from Wikipedia

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