Noodling For Flatheads is writer Burkhard Bilger's exploration of some vanishing traditions of the rural South.
The title chapter is about fishing for catfish using zero gear, only your fingers or a whole arm as live bait, then bashing the creature once you've wrestled it into submission. Sounds like a truly sporting way to do it, and a whole lot more fun than endless casting, spooling, and reeling. I've tried fishing a few times, but have no patience for it. Spear fishing has always sounded like it'd be fun to try too.
"Enter the Chicken" looks at the once popular, now widely reviled tradition of cock-fighting, still legal in Louisiana at the time of writing (and maybe still). He skips any judgmental remarks or editorializing but does not gloss over the gory details. It's nice that society is increasingly concerned with preventing cruelty to domesticated animals, though certainly overwhelmed by its hypocrisy in simultaneously ignoring mega-scale industrialized slaughter (evidenced by odd initiatives that would outlaw inhumane pens... on the way to the slaughterhouse!). Better the hunter's kill, in check with, and Darwinian effect on, wild game population. But I digress....
Subsequent chapters look at moonshine (I'd love to try some of the really good stuff), squirrel-brain eating (no thanks!), Soul Food, coon hunting, and world champion marble-playing hillbillies from Kentucky and Tennessee. Sadly it seems the brief resurgence of these "rolley holers" seems to have just barely predated the Internet era and I can find no video of these guys in action.
