Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

[Rick]

I understood that, and was just trying to make a joke about mine's lack of current registration that belly-flopped.

[aunt betty]

Joke that went sour?
No way.
I got a zillion bad jokes.
The wah-hoo one is actually pretty good.

My favorite is the one with the punchline..."that dog was trying to tell you that there were more ducks than you could shake a stick at on that pond".

[Ericdc]

Oh and you have to have a fishing license to catch frogs.


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[aunt betty]

License?!?! j/k

Can you shoot them with air rifles? 22?
The men who taught me to hunt were not angels but they wanted everyone to think that they were.
Yeah I've been on a few frog "hunts".

[Rick]

When I moved down here, we weren't allowed to use anything that pierced a frog's skin, and one of my first Louisiana frog mentor's tools was a fiberglass(?) canoe paddle he called his "sledge-a-matic," ala Gallagher. Thought he was gonna croak the day I snatched it from his boat to whack a cottonmouth on the hard road in front of my, then, country place. Apparently they'd taken enough frogs together to develop a love affair. His other frogging tool looked like a black, closed-ended windsock on the end of a long piece of metal conduit that he'd drop over frogs he couldn't reach with the paddle and give a twist once they jumped on in.

Not being a big frog fan, it wasn't until I met Sweet Chereau and I made a hunt with her son that I learned how most Louisiana frogs are caught. There was enough pressure on them up home, that we were always stealthy about getting into gigging range, taking care to not even jiggle the light. And while my paddle swinging Louisiana friend was much the same, Warren John would motor right on up to them with his headlight bouncing all over the place, reach over the side and grab them. Or when need be, run the boat onto the bank, hop out, slosh-slosh-slosh on over, and grab them.

That, and by the end of the night, the dog crate-sized "frog cage" in his boat didn't seem so silly. Turned out LA frogs are generally stupid as sticks.

[aunt betty]

Cooking frog legs right (to me) is a lot like making fried rabbit. You start out grilling but it tightens up so tight that you need iron teef. So I foil it up with some bbq sauce and let it stew nice and slow. Fallin' off the bones oh yeah.
They serve "fried frog legs" at one of the taverns here in C-U. You need iron teef to eat it.

[Rick]

I've always felt that the "secret" to frog legs is not over-cooking them. (And since ours are big enough that we cook everything behind the head, the "trick" to that is cooking the hind legs separately from the backs w/front legs. Just as frying quail legs separately from the rest of the bird is the trick to keeping them the best part of the bird.)

But frog is still just frog in my book.

[aunt betty]

Ooo it's been a while since I ate quail eggs.
Dad made a 4x4x8 pen and stocked it with birds to shoot for his Brittany spaniel Mitsi. Gee it had to be 1974.
They laid so many eggs and had babies that we were eating a lot of little tiny fried eggs.
Scrambled too but when my friends would spend the night bacon and tiny quail eggs were customary.
Finally one day we lopped all their heads off and feasted on crock-pot quail with rice n gravy.

[Rick]

Never ate an egg when I kept penned quail (under my country office window so I could eavesdrop on their small talk, but God bless Sweet Chereaux's aunt Nola for raising quail and pickling their eggs.

[aunt betty]

I'd do it again. It's easy but you have to be easy and move really slow or you spook em and half of them die from being scared and trampling each other.

They're tasty and if you look on craigslist to try and buy some they're 60 cents an egg.
$1.10 for a chick.

The price I found was for bobwhite quail.
We raised the Japanese ones. Coternix.

[Rick]

I'd do it again. It's easy but you have to be easy and move really slow or you spook em and half of them die from being scared and trampling each other.

When the preserve our operation once included was still shooting quail, the old guy whose hatchery we bought them from was fond of saying, "Quail come out of the egg looking for a way to die."

[Deltaman]

Had a fellow at work that used to bring me fresh quail, duck and chicken eggs, and would trade him fresh fish. About 7 of them fried sunny side up, with a side of bacon, a slice of toast, and a tall glass of ice cold milk....mmmmmmmmm good! Those eggs have an interior soft wall needed to be pierced when cracking, and found that using a serrated steak knife, and lightly forcing into the shell and rolling slightly on the table made easier work of breaking, and would open 7 or so, putting them into a glass, and pouring them one by one in to the skillet. Have never eaten them pickled, but have heard they are delicious, as Rick notes.

Been eating frogs all my life, and we can legally shoot them with a bb gun or .22, but most of our adventures growing up were gigging them. We have always had to sneak up on our frogs, and a .22 made it much easier to shoot two or three, as opposed to gigging one and scaring the others away when multiples were close by. Later in life we found that an airboat and a quick, firm grab was the easiest way to go, and would use bream baskets with the trap top door for putting them in.

[Rick]

About 7 of them...

Made me smile.

[aunt betty]

Yeah that's about right. 7

Half a limit. I get the other half wink wink.

We get eggs from a duck and chicken guy too. He gives them to us and we give him some liquid flowers.
Duck eggs are for sure worth trying.

[aunt betty]

Hey I never growed sweet potatoes and just got mine in the mailbox today.
There's two trains of thought. Mound or a big long hill? Furrow?
I'm a yankee city feller so try not to laugh too much.

Anyone got experience?


The spot I chose is where the old burn pile was. It tilled up and turned into powdery fine sweet black Illinois black loam topsoil dirt. Our dirt is black here. If you farm you'd be jealous. Corn for miles an miles. You get sick of seeing it.

[Rick]

Duck eggs are for sure worth trying.

Haven't tried them in years but remember them as too "rich" (read: "strong") for me.

[aunt betty]

We fry them and the yolks are extra yolky plus they're yuge.

[SpinnerMan]

Hey I never growed sweet potatoes and just got mine in the mailbox today.
There's two trains of thought. Mound or a big long hill? Furrow?
I'm a yankee city feller so try not to laugh too much.

Anyone got experience?


The spot I chose is where the old burn pile was. It tilled up and turned into powdery fine sweet black Illinois black loam topsoil dirt. Our dirt is black here. If you farm you'd be jealous. Corn for miles an miles. You get sick of seeing it.

Bunnies LOVE the vines. I had big beautiful vines and went out of town for two weeks. They ate them back to nubs.

I mix them in with my other vines and that works just fine in my little backyard garden.

Keep the bunnies from eating the vines. Other than that, I've had no problems just planting them among the cantaloupes and letting the chaos ensue.

The other year I got the biggest sweet potato I have ever seen. It looked like a football. To my great shock, it was actual edible. I made a lot of mashed sweet potatoes out of that one. How else do you cook a potato the size of a football?

[aunt betty]

That's gunna change the plan. We have rabbits out the ass and squirrels too.
Might have to get that nice air rifle I've been looking at.
They both cook up pretty good in a crock pot.

The plants I got came with a pamphlet of recipes. My kid loves them so I'll let you know on that "how do you cook em" thing.

[Deltaman]

Sweet tater fries are pretty sporty! Also, we take the big ones, slice them about 1/2" thick, saute' in butter with brown sugar loaded up on top. My dove field farmer usually gifts me some when we hunt in the fall, and they have usually just come out of the ground. They are pretty good baked too, also loaded with butter and brown sugar..........

[aunt betty]

Sweet tater fries are pretty sporty! Also, we take the big ones, slice them about 1/2" thick, saute' in butter with brown sugar loaded up on top. My dove field farmer usually gifts me some when we hunt in the fall, and they have usually just come out of the ground. They are pretty good baked too, also loaded with butter and brown sugar..........

And some hunny sweet sweet hunny.

[Ericdc]

Hey Rick, one of these might be worth a try?


Read the caption


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[Ericdc]

Yea they sound pretty raspy for sure. Would be interesting to compare it to the 40th.


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[Ericdc]

They did a video on them yesterday saying they were as close to the first few DC’s as they could get.


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[Ducaholic]

They did a video on them yesterday saying they were as close to the first few DC’s as they could get.


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Post it up I searched and can't find it. Thanks!

[Ericdc]

https://www.facebook.com/RNTCalls/video ... 264288538/


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