Collegiate Times

Thomas Mitchell, a senior mechanical engineering major and founder of Virginia Tech's Frog Gigging Club, pulls a frog off his bamboo pole and gig.

“The problem with today is it’s going to get kind of chilly tonight,” he said, “like 37 or something.”

In a couple weeks, Mitchell said, more frogs would frolic in the warmer weather.

Before sidelining all hope, however, Mitchell saw a frog in the same location as Funke’s original attempt. He kept the gig for the attempt and precisely aligned its points with the target. After a jolt, Mitchell reached into the water to check his aim — bull’s eye, he announced. He pulled the gig up and shimmied the frog loose for display.

“He’s a pretty good size,” Mitchell said. “Now you’ve got to keep in mind in September we got like nine of these guys in an hour and a half.”

The largest frog Mitchell ever gigged, he said, spanned the width of his shoulders when it was fully stretched. Yet Mitchell has gigged just five times. The frog gigging club — discounting the four novices on this year’s inaugural outing — has five active members. Before joining, the activity was alien to most of them.

Senior mechanical engineering major Alec Marshall said catching frogs is gratifying, though he had never frog gigged before Mitchell’s introduction.

“I’ve heard of fishing. I’ve heard of hunting. I’ve never heard of frogging,” Marshall said. “So it is something that’s not out there as much.”

Mitchell said his grandparents knew about frog gigging, but younger generations are rarely familiar with the pastime he’s come to enjoy. Still, the means to gig are commercially available.

At Dick’s Sporting Goods locations in Richmond and Lynchburg, associates in the lodge departments confirmed that the stores sold frog-gigging products. The Richmond employee said they aren’t in high demand at that location. In

Lynchburg, on the other hand, three gigs sold within three days last week, and the store replenished its supply of six gigs once this year.

The Christiansburg Dick’s Sporting Goods doesn’t stock frog gigs.

There have been few adverse reactions to his hobby, Mitchell said, and they have a common source.

“They’re typically Facebook comments,” he said, noting that it’s often females responding to his gigging pictures. “They usually make comments like, ‘Ew,’ in all caps or, ‘Gross,’ with exclamation points.”

First-time gigger Boal said she had no qualms about piercing a frog at the midnight hour.

“I dissected a frog in, like, sixth grade, and I wasn’t worried about it then,” she said. “I’m no more worried about it now.”

Hover likened it to another part of her diet.

“I eat cow,” she said, “so what the hell, you know?”

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A version of this article appeared in the Apr 27 issue of the Collegiate Times.