Summer before my freshman year at UT, the frat I eventually pledged had a bunch of guys come in to the hometown for a week to rush the recently graduated HS seniors and solicit donations from selected alums. We decided to go frog “gigging” one night. The plan was to load in 2-3 pickups and patrol the North Texas oil patch and ranch lands with varying degrees of permission, locate the stock tanks and then the frogs via spotlights and/or flashlights.
So 3-4 of us were armed with .22’s and the others with spotlights and gigs. The goal was to shoot the frogs, then gig the frogs before the snakes got to them.
So picture about eight or so 18-21 year olds going out at 10 pm after drinking a few beers and continuing to drink while shooting firearms in the dark…at frogs. It was chaotic at times as there would be some large tanks with several frogs…and several snakes. The firefights were brief, but intense as everyone would be yelling and laughing pointing out frogs and snakes and those of us with .22’s firing at said frogs and snakes, doing our best to avoid friendly fire.
Once, a frat rat from central casting from the middle of Houston approached a small tree hanging over a tank with his gig. The tree was covered with cotton mouths; never saw anything like it before and hope to never see anything like it again. Dressed in his starched plaid shirt, khaki shorts and topsiders, he acted like he was going to gig one of the water moccasins. We went nuts, shouting and pleading with him to stop. He stopped, I never knew if he was serious or not.
How we came out of that evening without tragedy was amazing. But we harvested lots of frogs and the frog leg fry we had the subsequent evening was awesome.
Ahh, to be young again.