Woman from Fojnica catches frogs, delicacy meat more expensive than veal

Sumbulka Miličević, from Gojevići near Fojnica, managed to collect only about 40 kilograms of frog meat this spring. The season is bad, she says.

Brave Sumbulka is the only woman in Fojnica who has been hunting frogs for more than 30 years. She explained to the Bosnian news agency Patria (NAP) that poverty forced her into it when she was a girl.

She watched her father hunt and prepare frogs to provide some meat for the family. She followed in his footsteps, and today, throughout Fojnica, she is considered the best and most famous hunter of these amphibians. The restaurant she runs with her husband is also known for frog specialties, which attract guests from all over Europe.

Sumbulka starts frog hunting at the beginning of March. During this period, she explains, frogs come to the swamps to lay eggs, so they are easy to catch. She hunts at night. She sets up a lamp, and they come to the light themselves. Her family and friends help her.

However, she says there are fewer and fewer frogs. Since forests in central Bosnia are increasingly being cut down, the frog population in them is also decreasing.

- There are fewer and fewer of them. And if they continue to disappear at this intensity, very soon there will be none at all – Sumbulka warns anxiously.

- I think they are retreating to quieter areas. But now the question is which part of the land is quiet. People have usurped everything – she explains.

Frog specialties in Gojevići are nothing new. Here, people often hunt and eat frogs. This tradition is over a hundred years old. However, others from the village do it for themselves and their families, while the Miličević family does this work professionally.

- Our diaspora most often requests frog specialties. They see how valued this meat is in the West, so they come to try my specialties – says Sumbulka.

When asked about the taste of frog meat, she explains that it is not much different from chicken.

SFOR soldiers also often visit her restaurant.

Everyone knows about Sumbulka and her frogs in the Fojnica area and beyond. Many jokes have been told at her expense.

 - Two frogs were playing. Then Sumbulka came and ruined their gathering – says a joke about this brave woman and her frogs, writes Patria.