Frog hunt plays to quite a melody.

Byline: Mark Blazis

COLUMN: OUTDOORS

July 16 may be thought of by most Massachusetts sportsmen as the deadline for applying for antlerless deer permits. But for frog hunters, Thursday is opening day.

Until Sept. 30, bullfrogs and green frogs, as long as they're three inches from snout to vent, are legal to harvest. They're protected during their breeding season, which starts when the water warms up to about 70 degrees. In addition, harvesting them later in the season allows them to grow bigger. A daily limit of 12 and a possession limit of 24 are more than enough for a gourmet dinner.

I've found fresh frogs' legs sauteed properly in butter to be more tender and succulent than chicken, if they're not overcooked. But I wonder how prudent it is to harvest them now with so many species of amphibians succumbing to environmental problems. Frogs and toads are diminishing everywhere.

I enjoy listening to frog songs. Each species sings a unique song. Learning all 10 Worcester County frog and toad songs can add a great deal of pleasure to your outdoor experiences. For me, spring peepers, the first amphibians we hear each spring, often occur together in large numbers and collectively sound like high pitched, soft sleigh bells. Individually, they have a peep-squeaky swing note.

Gray tree frogs are more like a toy soprano machine gun or jack hammer. The American toad has a high-pitched tea kettle whistle, like a cheap referee's whistle. If you can trill your tongue in a high soprano pitch for many seconds (your face may turn red in the process), you'll come close to imitating one. Fowler's toads remind me of a bratty baby hoarsely screaming "raaaah."

A leopard frog sings like a miniature chainsaw or dirt bike. Our pickerel frog snores, increasing and decreasing in volume like a Doppler-shifting race car going around a track. The wood frog is similar to a chicken clucking or an ignition trying to turn over but stuttering.

If you want to eat frogs, you must learn the songs of our two largest frogs: bullfrogs and green frogs. Bullfrogs, the giants of our frog world, sound like a fog horn or a cow mooing. Smaller green frogs sing like a plucked banjo string or a single note of a seal.

Differentiating a small, immature bullfrog from a fully mature green frog can be tricky. The green frog will always have a ridge on each side of its back. The bull frog's back has no ridges. Its skin folds extend only from behind the eye to behind the ear. And bullfrogs can grow double the size of a green frog.

The last of our frogs to come out of hibernation, bullfrogs don't emerge until May, looking quite brown from being in the mud so long. Most of the 10,000 to 20,000 eggs a female lays won't make it to adulthood. It takes a couple of years for them to get out of the tadpole stage and totally absorb their big, long tail, and five years for them to breed. Any big bullfrog you eat is over five years old.

Over the years, besides insects, I've seen them cannibalistically eating other frogs, small snakes, mice, rodents and baby turtles. Able to jump three feet and sometimes more, they can even, though rarely, take a small bird. If something can fit in its mouth, a bullfrog will try to eat it.

One captive bullfrog lived an amazing 16 years. The vast majority of them, however, succumb early to a vast number of enemies, from bass to owls, herons, raccoons and environmental attacks.

One spring many years back when I was co-authoring a book on Worcester County reptiles and amphibians, I discovered the lethal power of a pickerel frog. I had set up a terrarium with several species of local frogs to observe and illustrate.

All the frogs were eating well and thriving - until the day I placed a pickerel frog in with them. The next day, to my horror, all were dead - except the pickerel frog. It seems our gentle-looking, rectangle-marked beauty has a toxin in its skin that's deadly to other frogs. It reminded me of the poison dart frogs we find in the Amazon. Harmless to the touch but deadly when injected into the bloodstream via darts shot by Indian blowguns.

Some of us may forego frog hunting this season, but while there are still frogs singing, we should enjoy their wild chorus.

Mark Blazis can be reached by e-mail at [e-mail]