The moon emerged out of the clouds at a few minutes past midnight, reflecting on the murky water of a forest pond. I watched as Wyatt, the organizer of a hunting group, directed while a teammate seated behind him piloted their canoe through water covered with lily pads. [1] [1] Interviewees’ last names have been left off to protect their identities. The two friends were looking for bullfrogs.
Hunting frogs using gigs, or multipronged spears, is a widespread practice in some parts of the United States. The small town of Corydon in southern Indiana is one of them. In the surrounding Harrison-Crawford State Forest, giggers like Wyatt carry on family traditions of recreational hunting and interacting with the outdoors.
Wyatt’s grandfather first took him gigging as a child, he tells me, and he started gigging “seriously” when he was in high school. Over the past decade, Wyatt has introduced a couple dozen people to the practice—including me. As an ethnographer and photographer interested in relationships between humans and wildlife—and particularly amphibians—I have been following Wyatt and other giggers for over a year now.
Canoeing in the pond, Wyatt and the team gigged eight frogs that night—a relatively small hunt. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) currently permits giggers to hunt and collect bullfrogs and green frogs (less common in this region) up to the prescribed daily bag limit of 25 frogs per licensed individual between June 15 and the end of April. These regulations are intended to ensure that hunting does not hamper the natural breeding cycles of the frogs, leading to species endangerment or extinction. (Bullfrogs are not currently at risk of endangerment—in fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture considers them an invasive species in some parts of the country.)
Giggers usually show up to the intended hunting spots a couple hours before midnight on the day before the season begins. They scout the ponds in the forest for bullfrogs. Then, at the stroke of midnight, they begin what they call “the gig.”
The act and process of hunting is a ritual that has long caught the attention of anthropologists. Hunting requires collaboration and coordination between the participants in order for it to be successful. So, the activity gives ethnographers insight into social structures and roles. Hunting also involves direct encounters between people and wildlife, making it an intriguing arena for exploring multispecies relationships. Animals are “good to think with,” as the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss memorably put it in another context.
Though Wyatt is the organizer of this group, the hunt is indeed a collaborative social effort. It usually lasts for around three to four hours and sometimes involves the party visiting multiple medium-to-large ponds in a single night. During the hunt, the participants call out to one another when they spot appropriately sized frogs, share tips and stories, and praise one another’s skills.
