Some people are cooling off from temperatures around 100 degrees by going frog hunting. The season runs from July 1 to October 31 in Missouri. You need a fishing or hunting permit—which one depends on your choice of weapons.
I don’t think we had a frog-hunting season when I grew up. Frog legs rarely made it to the table. My father and uncle told tales about their boyhood exploits on hot summer nights. His family enjoyed the variation in their diet.
By the middle of the 20th century, not many people thought about frogs as food. Teenage boys would go to ponds or rivers, swing their flashlights back and forth until they saw a frog’s eyes reflected in the light, and practice their marksmanship with 22 rifles. Most saw frogs as interesting targets, not food.
On rare occasions my father would yearn for fried frog legs and would go to our pond to catch bullfrogs with his hands or spear them with a pitchfork.
My mother refused to prepare any wild gamel—frog, fish, squirrel, rabbit—for the skillet, but she would cook and eat it. As I recall, frog tasted better than squirrel or rabbit.
—Carolyn Mulford
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