HUNTERS PROWL PONDS AS FROG SEASON JUMPS INTO GEAR IN ILLINOIS

DU QUOIN, Ill. -- Waist deep in black water, shirtless, his skin a mottled collage of green flecks and duckweed and with a streak of mud on his forehead, where a mosquito got smeared, Jeff Thomas displays his prize.

The 34-year-old Thomas is standing in the midst of a farm pond cradling a flashlight with his neck, an eight-foot pole in one hand and a dripping bullfrog in the other. He has one of those cheap, gas-station cigars clenched in his teeth. It's midnight.

Thomas claims the prerequisite to becoming a frog hunter is having a faintly masochistic streak.

"This is definitely not for the squeamish," the self-employed carpenter says. He slowly wades ashore, clumps of seaweed sticking to his pants. "A lot of guys are afraid to get in the water at night for fear of snakes. But (snakes) are just part of the ritual of frogging," he says.

There are easier ways to obtain frogs during Illinois' June 15 to August 31 season (limit: 8 per day). Some frog hunters scull in boats on ponds in the darkness, flashlights in hand to poke at unsuspecting frogs with a gig (a long spear).

Others, necessarily sly under the adversary of daylight, entice wary bullfrogs to nip at well cast trout flies.

Southern Illinois University zoologist Ron Brandon explains bullfrogs are more common in farm pond-type habitats where weedy shorelines afford better tadpole survival, compared to open lakes. "They're not really an open water species," he says.

Thomas, who will return from the hunt sometime after 1 a.m., skins and soaks the frog legs in salt water before he fries them in his secret beer batter the next evening.

The darkest nights are ideal. On nights with a full moon, bullfrogs are keen to the silhouette of adversaries. Frogs will hop from their shoreline hunting spots into the water long before a hunter can get close.

Thomas insists on delving into the heaviest cover possible when wading the shoreline, even when other frogs are visible and in more accessible locations. It is where the big ones are, he says.

"The old bull always has the best hiding spot," he says, wading around a fallen willow, up to his neck at one point, to investigate a deep croak emanating from a tangle of brush.

After three or four minutes of silence in the brackish water, Thomas guides the outstretched gig through willow branches, the flashlight steadily glares into the unblinking eyes of a bullfrog that sits oblivious a few feet away.

But Thomas loses his balance in the uneven muck. Water splashes. Branches snap. The flashlight is under the water.