Bear Grease - Ep. 121: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Frog Giggin!

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Welcome back to This Country Life. This week on the show, our buddy Brent is gonna tell you all about frog gigging, one of his favorite summertime activities. He's gonna cover everything from the end of your spear to the end of your fork. Brent's also gonna touch on regulations, and just what becomes of the folks who throw the regs to the wayside. If you've got a body of water with some bullfrogs near you (and you probably do), you're not going to want to miss this one.  Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host Brent Reeves. From Coon Hunting to Trotlining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the Airways have to offer. All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I got a thing or two to teach you.

Frog gigging. If there's a more identifiable country, summer, nighttime grocery gathering endeavor than frog gigging, I don't know what it'd be. What other activity combines water, the darkness, a flashlight, sneaking up on prey and going home with a toastack full of goodies better than frog gigging?

I dare say none. There's different ways to do it, but the end goal is to get a mess big enough to get the grease to stinking. I'm going to tell you where to find them, how we catch them, how we clean them, and how we cook them up. Better get you a snack before you listen, because you're going to be hungry when we get done, but first, I'm going to tell you a story of how I came to poking holes in frogs on the history channel. In 2011, we were sitting at the table eating supper when an unknown number from Los Angeles rang on my cell phone.

I didn't answer. Had to be a wrong number. I didn't know anybody in Los Angeles. we finished eating and they called back. Now, I have to admit, I love wrong numbers. And texts from wrong numbers, they're like a bird nest on the ground. They're easy pickings.

Like the time I got a random text from someone at a conference who was bored and it went something like this. Is this the right number for your new phone, Lisa? This is Janet. This conference is so boring. I wish I had an excuse to get out of here. I'm sitting down front and I can't turn around to see where you are. Man, I remember this like it was yesterday.

It still gives me chills. Here was my response. Yes, Janet, thank goodness you texted. I had a burrito from the complimentary breakfast bar and I'm dying. I'm stranded in the bathroom and no TP, and my phone is almost dead. Grab a roll and run to the lobby bathroom. Hurry! 30 minutes later, I got a text saying,

Lisa, I've been to the lobby and every bathroom on six floors. Where are you? Now, I'm not sure how that played out. I blocked her number after that last one, but I hope she had a good sense of humor. So guess what? My phone rang again. But this time, I answered, and a lady asked to speak to Brent Reeves. I said, this is him.

She told me her name and said, I'm her producer for the BBC, and we have a new show that will be on the history channel called Harry Bikers. We saw your frog hunting video on YouTube and would like to pay you to help us film. a show like what you filmed. Now, I did have a video on YouTube that I'd shot a year earlier just for fun that I'd posted, but I made the mistake of putting born on the bio by Credence Clearwater revival with it and quickly got it snatched off the air by John Fogarty's lawyer or somebody, and rightfully so.

So I'm thinking to myself, this is a crockle bull, and eventually this lady's going to ask me for my credit card number so she can help me get rich. So I said, I'm not interested in participating in your scam today, and I hung up. She called back. And it's a wonder I even answered, but when I did, she said, Mr. Reeves, please hear me out. We're a legitimate television production company, and we want to hire you to help us produce a segment for the show.

It's an American version of a successful show in England, and we're going to be in Arkansas filming several activities and think you could help us represent your state and your way of life. I started to believe her, but I told her if they were looking for someone to help them poke fun at people in our way of life, that she'd picked the wrong man to help her. I wouldn't be a part of anything like that. She assured me that they loved what I'd filmed and they wanted the world to see what fun we were having and how we did it. She didn't ask me if I ate the frogs I caught, and I remember saying, yes, if I didn't eat them, I wouldn't be running around at night jobbing holes in them. She thought that was funny.

as for my address and said she was sending me $500. Three days later, I got it in the mail and ran to the bank to make sure it was good. It was. A few weeks later, and after lots of planning and coordinating, the production crew and hosts showed up for two days of filming. A month or so after that, yours truly was gigging frogs on the history channel with Paul Patronella and Bill Allen. These Texas boys were compadres and traveled. around the U.S., gathering up vittles and with the locals and cooking them the way the locals did,

then they'd flip the script and fixed the food according to their style. Paul was a sure enough trained professional chef, and Bill, well, he was like me. He'd just a cat that liked to cook, except he was really good at it. They got out of the TV business after a while, and Paul owns the bait barn fisheries down in Bryan, Texas, where you can order freshwater fish for your ponds and lakes. And Bill, well, that rassels busier than a wonderful one. on paper hanger. He's in Bryan, too, and a genuine brain surgeon caliber mechanic at Frank's motorcycle resurrections and even manages his sons ban the Southern degenerates. That sounds like the

recurring theme of my family reunion. It was a lot of fun doing that show, and I count them boys as friends, but they still ain't asked me to come fishing with them in the Gulf. But anyway, if you're interested in watching that episode, you can see it for free on the Pluto TV app. Search for Harry Biker's USA at episode No No Uno is Finger Licking Frogs with No Beard Brent. My buddy Jeremy Humphers helped me with that project. I don't think he's been fishing with him either. But if they're only inviting one of us, tough luck, Jeremy. Get your own podcast.

And that's just how that happened. I wonder how many folks to listen to this have ever been frog gigging. Even better, I wonder how many folks have eaten them. Just like a lot of the people I grew up with, I love for. frog legs battered and fried in the skeleton. My mama didn't eat a lot of them, but she'd cook us as many as we wanted on one condition. She didn't want to cook them if they hadn't been froze. Do you know that you can make a fresh skint frog leg wiggle and twitch with just a pinch of

salt put on them? Apparently, rigormorice doesn't set in as fast with frogs as it does other creatures, and fresh frog legs still have some cells that can respond to stimulus. and salt, hot grease, it can make them twitch. It would freak my mama out and we could hear her every time it happened, regardless of where we were, inside or out. First things first, we got to catch them to cook them. And there may be no cheaper source of entertainment

when it comes to the equipment you need to start gathering them up because you really only need a light to see in the dark with to blind the frog while you're slipping up on it. Now, when I was a young, I can't tell you how many of those old 6-volt batteries I went through that attached with two wires to a little light that was rigged up on a head strap. The metal bracketed that held that light was flat as a flitter, and by the end of the night it made your forehead feel like Chuck Norse

have been using it for target practice. I started to use my coon hunting light after that, and that was an old carbide light I'd wired up on my cap. I got my first one when I was 12 from Johnson's Hardware Store, and I paid $8 for it. If you don't know what a carbide light is, you ought to look that up. I was basically walking around in the woods

with an open flame of settling torch burning on my head. Not kidding. You adjusted the brightness by how much gas was fed to the flame through a valve that was connected to a small reservoir of carbide that sat under a small container of water that dripped onto the carbide creating settling gas. Now, what parent wouldn't want their child?

walking around with a flamethrower strapped to their face. I'd love to have that thing back, and if anyone out there has one that works and they'd part with it, hit me up on the old Graham and let me know. And before we get to catching them, we've got to know where to look and wind. Well, the wind is easy when the frogs come out, and ten times out of ten, the frogs come out at night.

That's one of the ones we're after due anyway. And the one we're after is the American bullfrog. Frog nerds, get your pencils ready and understand I'm not John Prine and talking ugly in Hawaiian. I'm fixing to speak Latin. Elito Bades Cadus Bayanus is the Latin name for our supper. Ben Baton, how'd I do on that? We got to have water in just about any old water will do. Ponds, lakes, creeks, bios, and rivers, they'll all fill the bill.

Slow moving portions of the streams are best, and the ones with clean banks, Well, they're even better. That show we filmed for the History Channel was done on a minnow farm where they kept the pond banks mode and we could slip down the levees usually spying the frogs a long time before we ever got to them. In the continental U.S., my research shows that every state except for the Peace Garden State of North Dakota has a chorus of bullfrogs. Do you know that's what you call a group of bullfrogs? A chorus. It's a fit and identifier if I do say myself.

I like to hunt them on bows, sloughs, and canals. You can get a small looming of boat or a pierrot or kayak, anything that will cruise along in shallow water and use a push pole, a paddle, or a trolley motor to quietly ease down the edges. That's where you're going to find old bully. He'll be sitting right near the edge of the bank on the ground or in the water. Their eyes will shine easy enough, but one thing I always look for is that whitish-colored patch of their throat

that most times it's just as easy to see as their eyes. If the woods are flooded, you can find them setting on logs, big lily pads, floating around moss, just about anywhere. The key to the whole operation is having a steady beam of light directed in that rascal's eyes to keep him still long enough for you to get close enough to add him to your limit. Gig man, stay focused on that frog and be ready in case he starts to get away. But not so focused that you're not aware of your surroundings. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls

in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? that's who I listen to.

I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises

and getting action. A good friend of mine tells the tale of when he was a game warden and received a complaint of someone gigging frogs out of season. Now, frog season usually opens around the middle of April here, but this spring had been unusually warm, and frogs were everywhere on this farm, and these boys were helping themselves a few weeks too early, and on top of that, they were supposedly selling them without a license.

There was a big cypress bow that wound through that property, and he said it was covered up with frogs. So after getting the complaint, he went down and snuck into a good hiding spot to sit and watch for him. He did it two nights in a row, parking, hiding his truck, walking a long way to his hiding spot, sitting in the dark and watching and waiting and listening for them and never saw a thing. He went back on the third night and was just about to leave when he saw a flash of light and heard him coming his way. In a few minutes, he saw three folks in a little aluminum boat. going back and forth from bank to bank.

The man in the back was running a little trolle motor. The man in the middle was holding the spotlight, and the guy up front was gigging the frogs. My friend slipped down from his hiding spot and stood behind a big cypress tree waiting for the men to get close enough to catch. The bow was wide enough that if he announced himself too soon, they could be on the other bank, ditch the boat, and get away.

So he had to let him get close enough that he could at least dentify him if they ran. He watched them for 10 or 15 minutes as they got closer and closer going back and forth across that canal, gigging frogs. Just when he thought they were getting close enough, he saw that beam of light surround the tree he was hiding behind. He said he knew right then that they'd seen him, and he went to step out from behind the tree and try to get a look at their faces. As he started moving around that tree, he saw a huge bullfrog sitting in front of that tree he was hiding behind. He said it was like he was hunting over a decoy. They had no clue he was there watching them.

Picking around that tree, he could see them all focused on that frog as the light got closer and closer. And you heard them talking back and forth about how big it was. He could also see that the only visible weapon they had in the open was the frog gig. When they got right near the bank and that gig was only seconds away from stabbing that frog, he stuck his arm around the tree and grabbed the frog geek, snatched it out of the man's hand and simultaneously saying, Game Ward! He said it was the blood, curdling squeal of the man in the front

that caused the man in the middle to drop the spotlight and start screaming too. They both started running out the back of the boat and over top of the man in the back who started screaming, what is it? What is it? What is it? He turned on his flashlight and hollered Game Warden again. They stopped running through the waste deep water and mud and crawled out on the bank where he was standing. He said they was actually seemed to relieve that they were only getting tickets and that a booger man hadn't got them. Oh, Lord.

There's three legal ways to catch frogs in Arkansas, and that's what I'm talking about, so y'all be sure and check with your state laws and do what's right. Here, if you're 16 or older, you're going to have a fishing license. In Texas, you'll need a hunting license, so wherever you are, make sure you get what you need. In Arkansas, you can catch them with your hands, use a gig or a spring-loaded grabber attached to a pole or a bow and arrow. And the last way, believe it or not, is to fish for them. Now, using your hands is my least favorite for two reasons, and those reasons are number one, I don't like poking my hands in dark places where cotton mouse live, and number two, I don't like poking my hands in dark places where cotton mouse live. and number two, I don't like poking my hands in dark places where Cotton Mouse live.

I got snake bit once, and I'll tell you all that story another day. Another thing about using your hands. You have to walk right up on them or run the boat right up on them, and sometimes you'll make a racket or hit a stob and spook the frog, causing him to jump and get away even though you got him blinded with the light. I've never used a bow and error, but that sounds like fun, especially if I used archery equipment. I don't think I'd be slinging frog areas out of my compound.

Probably be a better idea to get you a traditional bow or a recurve and do some instinctive shooting with a fishing arrow. They're attached to your bow with a reel or by a spool and you can shoot them and then reel them in. I can't think of a better way to stay in practice for archery. It sure beats standing in the backyard shooting a styrofoam target that wouldn't taste good even if a hairy biker cooked it. Fishing for frogs isn't.

easy way to let everybody have a cracket catch and supper. If you're new to frogging and you haven't developed those long forgotten caveman skills of chunk and spears, let the frog catch himself. Just get you a long cane pole or a jig pole. Attach a few feet of fishing line and tie crop a jig on it and dangle it in front of that frog. Frogs are predators and they'll eat just about anything. Once he bites it, just pull him to you and drop him in a sack and then it's on to the next one. Ever I got to making some notes and getting organized to talk to y'all about frog fishing,

I found a whole bunch of videos of folks catching frogs this way on the interwebs. Forget walleye fishing, Seth and Chester. The bullfrog tournament trail is where it's at. Plus, no weights and frogs. I've used a griber before. It's a tension-loaded apparatus that folks gig fish with, too. The pro to using a griber is when you gig the frog, you're really just catching him. The trigger hits that frog when you spear him and tension-loaded springs collapse in the jaws of the grabber.

They come together and trap the frog instead of poking new holes in him that he wasn't designed to live with. Then you just drop him in the ice chest or in your toe sack and move on to the next one. All your frogs stay fresh and you can wait and clean them in the morning without any problem. The cons are using the grabber, in my experience, is that joker will go off if you bump something in the boat or hit on him at the worst. possible time usually spooking your supper away. And fresh frogs are always trying to get back from whence they came, and you'll spend some of your time re-catching the frogs that hop out of the bag or the ice chest. I like to catch my frogs once, and when I'm using a gig, it ain't like I'm running a sword through them and throwing them in the dungeon to slowly meet their fate. That would

be cruel and unnecessary. It's just a frog, someone would say, well, it may be, but they're a creature we've been given dominion over to utilize, enjoy, and respect, even if it is just a frog. When I pull him off the gig, I give him a good watt four on the noggin by taking hold of his legs and using the part of his head where his hat would go for a hammer on the side of the boat. Wham! And drop him in the bucket. Now you've got a mess of dead frogs, and if you ain't planning on cleaning them when you get done, you better have some eyes ready to keep them good and cold till you get ready to jerk the breeches off of them the next morning.

that's easy too and i'm fixing to tell you how to do it you're going to need a dead bullfrog any kind of kitchen shears a pair of pliers and a pocket knife you know what kind of pocket knife grab your shears and cut his feet off at the ankles then with your pocket knife cut a line across his back about even with the armpits of his front legs take your pliers and grab a hold to the skin as you just cut and take your other hand and grab him just above that cut using his front legs for leverage. Pull down with your pliers, and just that easy, off comes his bridges. Then I'll take the shears and cut across where his back meets his legs.

You should have two legs ready for frying. Some folks will separate them or leave them together. Whatever you prefer, don't matter. All right, somebody get the peanut oil to 325 degrees. We're about to get busy cooking up our vintels. Buttermil, egg, flyer, salt, and pepper. That's about as basic and it gets And that's all you need to cook up a mess

That's really good food I like to add a little crawfish bowl And lemon pepper to my flyer I talked about that batter mixture On the catching catfish with trot lines episode If you ain't heard that one You need to get your ears over there on that one And get to listening

Sometimes I'll go with two parts flyer To one part cornmeal if I'm feeling fancy And I'll use the same spices or a combination There ain't no rules. Just fix them the way you like them. But when you fix them, holler at me when they're ready. A basic way to make them is mix that egg up in a bowl of buttermilk. Dip the legs in there and then roll them in the flour that you've added spices to

and drop them in the grease. You can double up the dipping process, legs in buttermilk, then in flour, back to buttermilk again, back in the flyer to give them that extra crust. Man, it's good. If you deep fry them, well, you know how much oil you need. If you do it in a skillet, about a quarter to a half inch, plenty. The best part of this activity is it's one of many ways to introduce children to the outdoors and the concept of being self-reliant.

With your help, you can teach them that darkness can be inviting and wonderful, filled with adventure and fun. I hope y'all will be inspired to get out with the little folks and have fun. School's out, and when I was young and school being out meant that school was in with my dad. There's a whole other world going on out there at night, and it's responsibility of those of us who are familiar with it to show those that ain't how good it is. We value and look out for the things we love, even if it is, just a frog. This is Brent Reeves, signing off.

Y'all be careful. First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out.

First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.