Summarize:

Worms prefer living in black, moist, nutrient-rich soil with a covering of mulch or leaves. Small garden spaces, bases of trees, and areas that have decomposing leaves, are all typical sites that worms can be found. The optimal time to catch worms is right after a rainfall. It may be helpful to catch worms at dusk or nighttime. Night crawlers particularly like to surface at night. Softly thrust a shovel into the moist dirt. Push the shovel down until the majority of the blade is in the dirt. You can use your foot to help push the shovel down further. Use leverage to lift the pile of dirt out of the ground, and look for worms in the newly made hole. If you don’t immediately see worms wriggling around in the hole, you may have to keep digging a bit. You can also rake the mulch and leaves away from the soil and rake into the soil itself to stir it up and expose the worms. However, keep in mind that you will have to work quickly because they will head deeper underground when once the soil is disturbed. While searching for worms, turn big rocks, pieces of wood, bricks – along with any other relatively big and heavy object making contact with the soil – over, to search for worms underneath. You might find more success doing this when it is darker out. Once the object is flipped over, the worms will most likely try to burrow back into the soil when being shone with a light source. Use your fingers to pick up any worms you see. Try to pick the worms up by their end side, which will be lighter in color. This is because the end of their body is the last part of the worm to come out from the ground, and the first part to retract back in. You want to prevent the worms from getting the chance to retract back into the dirt.  If you grab a worm while it’s trying to go back into the dirt, do not yank it out of the ground. This can most definitely break the worm in half. Instead, hold steady pressure, keeping their body taut (don’t pull), and the worm will eventually relax and release their hold from the dirt.  After grabbing a worm or two, dip your fingers into the apron full of sawdust. This will help dry your fingers from the slime covering the worms, and increase your grip when picking up the worms.  Depending on what you’re using the worms for, a dozen or two dozen worms should suffice. You don’t want to remove a large number of worms from any given area, because it could have serious negative repercussions for that natural environment. As you pluck the worms from the ground, drop them into the plastic container with some dirt, a bit of decomposed leaves, or worm bedding. This will keep the worms alive while giving them an environment to nest in, until you use them later. The collected worms should be stored in a cool (less than room temperature), dark location. Be sure to put a cover on your plastic container. Worms are capable of crawling out of containers without lids. The lid must have puncture holes (about 5-6 holes a little bigger than the size of a pen tip), so the worms have the opportunity to breathe.  If you don’t put holes in the container lid, you’ll have a container full of dead worms. Consider storing your collected worms in the refrigerator. A refrigerator qualifies as a cool, dark storage location, but just be conscious of the temperature of the refrigerator. You don’t want to accidentally freeze your worms.
Find your digging area. Dig into the dirt. Look under objects. Collect the worms. Preserve the worms for later. Store the worms.