NEWS

'You just kind of creep up on them': Bullfrog hunters in Kansas share tips for catching long leapers

Tim Hrenchir
Topeka Capital-Journal
The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks posted this photo of a bullfrog recently to accompany a post on its Facebook page encouraging people to go bullfrog hunting.

Thad Lowrance recalls hunting for bullfrogs at night, armed with only a flashlight.

"You just kind of creep up on them, shine the light in their eyes, then reach out and grab them," the Wichita man said Friday. "But if your hand breaks that beam of light between the flashlight and the bullfrog, it'll jump, and get away."

Lowrance was among those who responded after the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks noted July 24 on its Facebook page that bullfrog hunting season in Kansas began July 1 and runs through Oct. 31.

"A summer in Kansas isn’t complete without getting your feet a little wet — while frogging, that is," the KDWP said in that post.

Farm ponds, puddles, shallow creeks and marshes "will be teeming with the sounds of bullfrogs splashing and croaking," the KDWP added.

It asked for bullfrog hunters to share their favorite techniques.

Those who responded included Facebook user Kevin Shelnutt, who told The Capital-Journal he lives in Georgia but hunts often in Kansas with a friend who lives in Norton.

"We grew up gigging frogs," Shelnutt wrote Friday. "I believe it’s just part of that 'field-to-table' lifestyle that I grew up in. We fished, hunted and trapped all year and that’s what we ate to live. I didn’t know what store-bought beef tasted like till I got old enough to buy it myself lol."

Shelnutt's Facebook response to the KDWP's question about frog hunting techniques told of how he has used a technique called "gigging" to use a pronged spear to skewer bullfrogs.

Shelnutt said he took his wife frog gigging in a "nasty cow pond" on one of their first dates.

"That’s how you weed out the poser country girls," he said.

Lowrance considers using a flashlight and his bare hands to be "challenging and more sporting" than gigging, he wrote on the KDWP's Facebook page.

He told The Capital-Journal on Friday that in the 1970s he became pretty good at grabbing a bullfrog after shining a flashlight in its face.

"I got to the point where I was successful probably eight out of 10 times," he said.

Lowrance said he also used to sometimes "fish" for bullfrogs during the day with the same technique he would for fish, using a pole, a jig, a hook and a piece of red fabric.

"You'd just dangle it around in front of them and they'd jump up and grab it," he said. 

If the bullfrog bit, that would sometimes be followed by a "wild ride," Lowrance said.

He said he and his family used to eat the bullfrogs and fish he caught as a teenager.

But these days, his standard practice when fishing is to "catch and release."

And Lowrance hasn't gone bullfrog hunting in probably 35 or 40 years, he said.

"It's a young man's sport," he said.

A valid fishing license is required to hunt bullfrogs in Kansas, except for people the law doesn't require to hold such a license, according to Kansas statute.

Kansas law says bullfrogs may be legally taken at any time of the day or night by net, gig, hook and line, hand, bow and arrow or crossbow.