The Bullfrog

 

 

 

      Froggers don't find many bullfrogs during the daytime; they find them at night, using a good light, which shines their eyes at a distance.  Many things shine in the light at night along our waterways, spiders and insects, sparkling rocks, and other amphibians and reptiles, but when you learn what a set of bullfrog eyes look like, you have little doubt when you see a pair of them.  A big bullfrog's eyes looks a little like the headlights on a Model T Ford. 

      As long as he is blinded, he will set there, stone still, and you can actually reach down and grab him by hand. You have to be quick and decisive...and firm.  A bullfrog can wriggle out of your hands if you don't hold on to him.  Once you have him, the best thing to do is put him in a wet cloth sack or wet burlap bag...and keep it wet and well closed.  

      Froggers get scarcer every year. The men who once caught bullfrogs by hand as they traveled along Ozark rivers either wading or boating, were real capable outdoorsmen.  They come from a different time and training. You had to   put up with the heat, bugs swarming your headlamps, and an occasional watersnake that just might be a cottonmouth.

      Most of today’s froggers gig them, and that's a great deal easier perhaps.  You don't have to get into the weeds or get nearly as close.  But if you gig frogs, you need to know which ones are too small just at a distant glance, because you can't cull them.  A gigged frog will die in time.  The bigger the frog, the better the eating, and that's what most froggers are after.  Frogging may not be the greatest of sport; there are perhaps things to do which are more fun.  But frogs are as good to eat as anything!

      There are few people who do not relish fried frog legs.  A big bullfrog in Ozark waters may reach a length of 15 to 18 inches with their legs stretched out.  A 12-inch frog isn't big enough for most, and if he is less than a foot in length he isn't really a keeper.  But if he is big enough to keep, you will find quite a bit of meat on the back and the front legs as well as the back legs, so skin the whole frog and fry all of it.  Cut off the head, cut off the feet, and then it will skin easily.  Remove the entrails and cut the sheath of nerve fibers in the inside of the small of the back.  If those are not cut, the frog will jump and twitch in the frying pan and it looks as if he is still alive.

      Frog meat is very white and firm and some people say it is a little like the white meat of a chicken. I don’t see any comparison.  It is perhaps closer to the meat of a crab or crawfish.   Frogs are very clean creatures, actually, though the water you find them in may look a little bit bad due to modern day pollution and algae growth.  If it gets too polluted, you won't find the frogs, and that's why so often you hear froggers say, "There aren't any frogs anymore!"  What they should be saying is, "There's not much clean water anymore."

      Bullfrogs eat lots of insects, and they do nail them with a long tongue.  That's why during the day you can dangle a hook in front of one with a little white or red yarn on it and they'll grab it.  Years ago when ponds had lots of bullfrogs and clean water, farm kids caught frogs during the day in such a manner. 

      Bullfrogs eat a lot of things, including smaller frogs, small snakes, worms, small fish and of course their very favorite food, the crawfish. The bullfrog is highly favored by mink and coons and otters and bigger snakes as well, so they have to watch for lots of enemies.  One of his greatest predators is the great blue heron, and they are at incredibly high numbers right now in the Ozark waters.  That has a lot to do with why there are fewer bullfrogs right now in small streams and lakes where there once were so many.  

      But froggers have a lot to do with that as well, as does the degradation of our rivers, increasingly tainted with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer and becoming choked with algae.   Some ponds which were clean enough to swim in 40 years ago are now covered with slime.

      You'll find bullfrogs in future summers where you find plenty of big bullfrog tadpoles this summer.  And any place where there are bullfrogs, you are liable to find a few froggers on a summer night.  And that's because you can't find anything much better to eat than a bullfrog!

 

Read more outdoor columns by Larry Dablemont on your computer at larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. Also see www.larrydablemont.com for books and magazines  published by the  author.

      

Groundhog Hunter

 

A would-be big game hunter… reduced to hunting groundhogs

       Myrtle Kelly was a widow lady, a good friend of my grandparents, who owned the Big Piney River bottom fields next to the Sweet Potato Eddy. I have written about her before, how I would ride my bicycle down to her place as a boy and we would fish up and down the river by her farm.  When I was in my first year of college, I was seventeen and we went to summer classes back then.  I would come home from school on weekends and found    out that Mrs. Kelly was having trouble with an over abundance of groundhogs in her field of clover along the river.  I saw my chance to help a damsel in distress so I borrowed a rifle and scope my dad had traded for, and on a Friday and Saturday I would sit on the hillside above the clover patch and shoot groundhogs.   I would take the skins home and tack them up on Dad’s smokehouse wall to dry, and Mrs. Kelly would clean the groundhog and freeze it to be given to one of the front bench regulars at the pool hall.  Several of those old men had wives who knew how to cook them.  As poor as we were, Mom wouldn’t resort to cooking a groundhog or possum or coon.  We ate bullfrogs, quail, ducks, rabbit and squirrel and tried a few exotic things on occasion like soft-shell turtles and coot gizzards, but even with me killing nearly a dozen groundhogs that summer, we never ate one.  The old men at the pool hall let nothing go to waste, claiming a clover-eatin’ ground hog was better eatin’ than a beaver.  I was a good shot and with my rifle propped up for a hundred-and-fifty-yard shot, I aimed for the head of the woodchuck and didn’t often miss.  

       Those hides I kept were used also.   Grandpa took them and cured them with ashes and removed the hair. Then following the traditional use of groundhog hides… long narrow strips were cut for leather boot and shoelaces that were tough and unbreakable.

 

Not long ago, I was reading through one of my old outdoor magazines from the 1930’s and there was an article from a survivalist-hunter and outdoor writer giving several old-days recipes, which included one about groundhogs.  He said that the best wild game he had ever tasted was from big horn sheep.  I am thinking the best furbearer meat from the Ozarks is muskrat, so I am including that recipe from him also.  Here are his recipes…

 

Woodchuck. They are very much worth saving, particularly if after skinning you carefully remove the small glands from under the forelegs. Unless too grizzled and tough, they’re generally best roasted. But if you run into a patriarch, brown the pieces in a small amount of fat. Then cover with water, season, and simmer 2 hours or so until tender. For a stew, add vegetables when the meat is nearly done. If any ‘chuck is left over for serving cold, it’ll be juicy and more flavorful if allowed to cool in the stock.

 

Roast Muskrat. Moist dark roast muskrat tastes like turkey, only better. The thing to remember is to remove the little glands under the hind and forelegs Rub inside and out with an onion, and season all over with salt and pepper, using more pepper than you usually do. If you want, fill loosely with stuffing made in the proportions of 2 parts of soaked dehydrated apples and 1 part pitted and chopped cooked prunes. If you’ve any horseradish, include a teaspoonful of that. Place the meat on a greased rack in a shallow pan, Brush generously with melted margarine or other fat. Lay several strips of bacon over the top Roast in a moderate oven. Muskrat is also excellent both fricasseed and fried. For the former, make a well-seasoned brown gravy and simmer onions and pieces of muskrat in this until tender. Serve with rice. For the latter, disjoint the muskrat, parboil for 20 minutes if not young and tender, dip in flour and fry in deep fat until golden brown.

 

And if you live in the woods like I do, you need this recipe too…

 

Squirrel Stew.  If you only have a couple or so squirrel and some robust appetites to satisfy, the flowing stew may be the solution. Cut up the squirrel. Brown the pieces in the 3 tablespoons of butter or margarine. Then cover with 3 cups water. Season only with 1-teaspoon salt and 1/8-teaspoon pepper so as to maintain the distinctive natural flavor. Simmer 1 hour Add ¼ cup chopped onion, ½ cp diced celery and ½ cup sliced cart. Thicken with a smooth paste made by blending 3 tablespoons flour with ¼ cup water. Cook an additional 15 minutes. If you want to top this one off, roof it with dumplings.

How I Learned to Catch Trout

 

         When I went to School of the Ozarks College in the early summer of  ‘65, I was only 17 years old.  A counselor in high school had applied for me and in late May of that year I was notified that I hadn’t been accepted.

         If you want to talk about miracles, consider this one. In early June the registrar at S of O called and told me that five students had quit the first week. I didn’t understand what he was telling me until he said I was number five on the waiting list. 

           School of the Ozarks then was a college for poor kids. They gave you a job where you went to classes a half day and worked a half-day to pay the tuition and room and board.  Here’s another miracle for you!  The president, Dr. M. Graham Clark called me into his office the second day I was there and declared that on the application where it asked what I had worked at I listed so many jobs he suspected that either no student that ever went to school there had ever had so many jobs or that I was the biggest liar ever on campus up to then.  

         It wasn’t actually lying; I had just listed everything I had done for an hour or so since I was 13 years old.  Like where I said I had done roofing I had really done it because Dad made me help   him put a roof on a shed.  My job as a commercial fisherman came down to selling a half dozen catfish illegally to Churchill Hoyt at the pool hall the year before. But that day I got the most coveted job on campus, Dr. Clark’s right-hand man.  

         When he had to go to the airport I drove his Lincoln        Continental back home.   I watched his grandsons when they swam in his pool, I took them arrowhead hunting and I mowed his lawn with a tractor mower.   On occasion one of the half dozen girls who worked inside for Mrs. Clark would bring out some fresh-baked cookies for me to sample.  I was envied all right and amongst the construction workers and the grounds crew students and the cannery workers, I wasn’t all that popular.  But I still made two or three friends. One of them was so much like me he might have been a brother.  In fact he became one! In the evening of the first month, my roommate took me down to a big gravel bar and showed me how to catch trout on Lake Taneycomo. His name was Darrel Hamby... from Piedmont Mo, where he still lives.

         The best thing about S of O was Lake Taneycomo, full of trout and ducks.  The School sat on a bluff right above it. I knew nothing about fishing anywhere but the Big Piney where I had grown up.  And I had taken my rod and reel to school with me… a Shakespeare casting reel with ten-pound line.  Darrel taught me about trout and how to catch them with a spin-casting outfit and 4 pound line.  It was easy fishing and no backlashes. Plus, you could cast way out there with a light treble hook and salmon eggs or cheese and catch 12- to 14-inch trout like you could catch black perch (green sunfish) back home on the Piney.  Darrel had grown up on the Little Black and St. Francis Rivers and he took me back there on several occasions to fish. A few years ago Darrel made his first fishing trip to Canada with me. And I consider that my third miracle of 1965, meeting a life-long friend and fishing partner.  Before this summer ends, when it cools down some, I am heading over to fish again with my old friend. He says he thinks we might catch a big catfish or two.  Wouldn’t that be miracle?

 

         You can read all about those days at School of the Ozarks in one of my books entitled, “The Prince of Point Lookout…Life and Learning at School of the Ozarks”.  I intended to give the school, now known as College of the Ozarks, 500 free copies of the book to sell. That would give the school about seven thousand dollars in profit to some kid out in the Ozarks like me, an education.  But the school president at the time turned down the offer.  If you want to read about those years I spent there, and all about the times with Darrel and Woody P. Snow, Just call me at 417 777 5227 and I will sell you one at half price.  Or you can send 9 dollars and 2 dollars worth of postage stamps and I will send you a book inscribed to you and signed by Darrel and woody and me!  That address is… Pt. Lookout, Box 22,  Bolivar, Mo 65613.  If you  don’t get a few laughs out of the reading of it, I will return your money.