Adam Buckely Cohen

The Snapper Grabbler

outdoorlife-editor — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:26:38 -0400

"You know, i've always been interested in anything i could pick up that would make everybody around me haul ass."

-Hal Coleman, Turtle Extraction Specialist

"Nah, there aren't any cottonmouths in this part of the country," says Hal Coleman as he shoves his right arm deep under the bank of a sewage-colored retention pond. "We do have copperheads,"-with his free hand, he points to the snakeskin that encircles the crown of his soft, wide-brimmed hat-"but they don't like water. Of course, there are some nasty water snakes here." He grins a big, toothy grin. "And they will bite the crap out of you."

Coleman is playing to the crowd, and five of the six members of the media clustered around him-the cameraman from the outdoor television show, the director, the two magazine photographers and me-smile politely. The sixth person, host of the television show, is standing hip-deep in the pond next to Coleman, hamming it up for the camera. It's a classic deer-in-headlights routine: wide eyes, frozen
grimace, lips curled back to expose gritted teeth.

The director pushes a microphone closer to Coleman. This is probably the first time the varmint exterminator from just north of the Chattahoochee River has ever found himself in the center ring of a mini media circus, and he's clearly enjoying it. Coleman drawls apocryphal stories about his granddad as his right arm explores an unseen pocket beneath the edge of the pond. "That's kind of a deep hole right there. Throw me that hook," he says. The TV host hands him a steel rod with a curved tip, and Coleman-now on his knees, most of his coveralls swallowed by the pond's brown waters-uses the implement to probe the nether regions of the bank.

We all grow quiet, a reverent congregation gathered around Coleman's half-submerged figure. Only this is no baptism. It's a turtle hunt.

"Whoa," he says in a husky whisper. "Whooooaaa." We brace ourselves, anticipating the appearance of a reptile
as big around as a manhole cover. The cameraman scrambles closer to get a better angle for the shot. In an instant, Coleman's hand breaks the surface and...nothing. He shakes his head and returns the rod to his TV-host sidekick, who holds an empty duffle bag waiting to be filled with turtles.

"That's a slicked-out hole," says Coleman, rubbing his thumb back and forth across the pads of his fingers. "There's been a turtle swimming in and out of there. You can feel where the smooth part of his belly has worn it slick."

Coleman moves up the bank a little ways, and the media clump follows. As he goes, he fingers every hidden nook and cranny, reading its unseen surfaces like Braille. Shutters click. Video rolls. A boom mike lurks just outside the frame. All to document a guy catching a snapping turtle with his bare hands. Or so we hope.

[pagebreak]

Something to Do

Roswell, Georgia, has been home to the Coleman family since 1837, and home to big snapping turtles much longer. Hal Coleman doesn't know when the two groups first crossed paths, but by the time he jumped into a creek as a teenager to wrestle out his first snapper, he'd been listening to his grandfather's stories of turtle grabbling for most of his life.

Grabbling?

"The sport or activity of sticking your arm into a hole underneath the bank to catch something," says Coleman. "It's always been called grabbling around here." But what you're after and what you find, he adds, can be two different things. "It could be a snake. A muskrat. A beaver. Or a catfish." Even, thankfully, a snapping turtle.

Common snappers live in fresh water throughout the U.S. and can grow as large as 60 pounds. They eat fish, bugs, dead things and the occasional duckling. Their cousins, alligator snappers, have been known to have heads as big as paint buckets and bodies the size of coffee tables, but you won't find those brus in the foothills of the North Georgia Mountains. "The elevation's too high," says Coleman.

There's a tendency to believe everything Coleman says when he speaks about snapping turtles. Perhaps it's his
delivery-slow and chicken-fried, as charming and persuasive as a country preacher's. Or maybe it's the long open face and laughing green-gray eyes. Most likely it's the graveyard of snapper shells adorning the reception area of his pest-control business on the outskirts of Atlanta.

"Yeah, I caught all of those," he says.

I count the empty carapaces hanging on the wall. "So," I ask, "you've caught fifteen snappers by hand?"

"Oh, no. I've caught hundreds of them. Those are just the ones I hung up."

It's the day before our retention pond adventure, and I've come to visit Coleman at his headquarters for a primer on all things turtle. He ushers me back to his private office, a place that Martha Stewart has clearly never seen. One bookcase
is filled with skulls-anaconda, sawfish, antelope, snapping
turtle, bobcat, shark, pronghorn and coyote. "I probably ate that one," he says, tapping a snapping turtle skull.

A 15-foot reticulated python skin stretches from one wall to another, kept company by empty hornets' nests, a colony of beaver pelts and a gallery of mounted exotic insects. And then there's the really creepy stuff. The bookcase is filled with tarantulas and scorpions. Live tarantulas and scorpions.

He switches on a black light over a terrarium, and the scorpion inside fluoresces like a white T-shirt in a disco. "Their exoskeletons glow. All species of scorpion glow under black light," says Coleman. I knit my brow and nod, thinking only: Please don't ask me to hold that thing.

He doesn't.

[pagebreak]
A Nice Mouthful of Fingers and Toes

Eventually, Coleman plunks himself behind his desk to talk turtle. "For grabbling, what you need is a creek or a pond that's not too big. In the really big ones, the water has washed out caverns under the bank that might go a dozen feet back." Which can be a problem, because it's those holes where snappers spend most of their days. "And if that hole's too deep, you can't get to where the turtles are."

As cold-blooded creatures, snappers lack the ability to regulate their body temperatures, which is why some nights you'll find them warming themselves on asphalt highways. And that's also why Coleman goes looking for them in shallow creeks and ponds with little or no tree cover. "The warmer the water," he says, "the higher the concentration of turtles."
Grabbling requires no sonar, bait, tackle or hooks. You just climb into the water and start feeling along the underside of the bank for a turtle in its lair. If your fingers encounter something "turtlish," says Coleman, gingerly run them over the creature to get the lay of the reptilian landscape. "If he's facing out toward you and you feel his head, just reach around behind his neck and grab him." This approach, he admits, is not for the faint of heart. "It takes nerve, but once you've got him by the neck, he can't bite you. Then all you have to do is keep pulling, and he'll come out of there." He pauses. "Just don't let go." Or? "You're gonna get snapped."

If you can't find the snapper's head (either because it's retracted or because the turtle is turned away from you), feel along the edge of its shell until you find the jagged area directly above the tail. "Then just reach down and grab his tail," says Coleman, "and start pulling." Extracting a turtle by its tail, he says, requires considerably more work than the neck-yank method. When you pull a snapper out of its lair backward, it will splay its legs and dig its claws into roots, rocks and anything else within reach, making the extraction process slightly easier than raising the Titanic. "A small
turtle-ten pounds or so-is unbelievably strong," says Coleman. "And he'll turn around and try to bite you."

Ah, yes, the biting thing again. With powerful, beaklike jaws and necks that can stretch two-thirds the length of their shells, snappers can inflict serious injury. "One time, a buddy of mine got bit so bad his finger looked like it had been chopped by a butcher knife," says Coleman. Still, he has yet to see the fabled bite that cleaves the finger clean off. Coleman himself has been bitten only once-on the forearm. "I had long sleeves on, so it didn't cut my arm so much as it totally bruised it. From my elbow to my wrist, everything just mounded up and turned black and blue immediately."

Somehow, the episode didn't dampen Coleman's enthusiasm for grabbling. "You'll see tomorrow," he says as he shows me the skin of an 11-foot diamondback rattlesnake he killed in a cabbage patch. "Turtles aside, it's just a fun, frolicking, social event." A moment later, he's dangling one of his (live) pet scorpions by the tail. "You know, I've always been
interested in anything I could pick up that would make everybody around me haul ass." And it strikes me-not
for the first time-that Hal Coleman sees the world a little
differently from the rest of us.

[pagebreak]
A Turtle Man Practices His Craft

Grabbling D-day breaks gray and still, the soupy air ripe with the promise of late-summer rain. Our entourage gathers in the parking lot of Coleman's exterminating business, then heads to a subdivision that looks better suited to an episode of Desperate Housewives than a reptilian wrestling match. But behind the brick colonials with manicured lawns, we find
one of Coleman's favorite grabbling haunts: an unassuming, man-made pond.

This is no professional mission. Although Coleman is paid handsomely to remove various insects, reptiles and assorted fauna from the violated space of humankind, nobody from the subdivision has contracted him to take snapping turtles from their midst. Then again, the subdivision's pond snappers, which apparently haven't cultivated many friendships among the residents, have no champions here who will protest Coleman's efforts.
Coleman swaps his oxford and khakis for a union suit,
coveralls and an old slouch hat. The get-up is part Hee Haw, part practicality. "If you wear pants and a shirt, your shirt comes out and you get rocks and stuff down there," he says. That "stuff" can include the occasional water snake.

Grabbling requires a sidekick, and today that office falls to O'Neill Williams, Coleman's buddy and host of the television show O'Neill Outside. The short but bull-strong Williams plays Costello to Coleman's Abbott, providing comic relief and
toting the sack that will serve as a holding pen for any
quarry the grabbler lands. He also stands ready to drive Coleman to the ER if a snapper runs amok and g," says Coleman. "And he'll turn around and try to bite you."

Ah, yes, the biting thing again. With powerful, beaklike jaws and necks that can stretch two-thirds the length of their shells, snappers can inflict serious injury. "One time, a buddy of mine got bit so bad his finger looked like it had been chopped by a butcher knife," says Coleman. Still, he has yet to see the fabled bite that cleaves the finger clean off. Coleman himself has been bitten only once-on the forearm. "I had long sleeves on, so it didn't cut my arm so much as it totally bruised it. From my elbow to my wrist, everything just mounded up and turned black and blue immediately."

Somehow, the episode didn't dampen Coleman's enthusiasm for grabbling. "You'll see tomorrow," he says as he shows me the skin of an 11-foot diamondback rattlesnake he killed in a cabbage patch. "Turtles aside, it's just a fun, frolicking, social event." A moment later, he's dangling one of his (live) pet scorpions by the tail. "You know, I've always been
interested in anything I could pick up that would make everybody around me haul ass." And it strikes me-not
for the first time-that Hal Coleman sees the world a little
differently from the rest of us.

[pagebreak]
A Turtle Man Practices His Craft

Super Shoot: World's Best Riflemen

outdoorlife-editor — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:26:38 -0400

Don't talk to Tony Boyer about Zen.

Oh, sure, Tony's been known to sit at the range from daylight to dark, peering through his scope, waiting for the wind to die down. And some days, that doesn't happen often. Not more than once or twice. Which means Tony won't get off more than a round or two that entire day. But sure enough, he'll be back the next day, doing the same thing. Waiting, watching.

"Isn't there something, well, meditative about that?" I ask.

Tony rolls his eyes and shakes his head. He doesn't suffer fools gladly.

Some people think the wind talks to Tony. That's not exactly true. Still, from all those years spent at a rifle bench, gazing out at the wind flags as they dance and flutter, he does know the intimate whispers of the breeze. He's learned that gusts are not single notes. They're refrains that play over and over. So he sits on his stool, trigger finger poised, body still. Waiting until he picks out a pattern. Until he can predict-know-when that perfect lull will be upon him.

It's the eve of the Firearms Industry Super Shoot, the biggest competition in benchrest shooting, and Tony still has some mechanical issues to work out with his gun. He's got to talk strategy with the boys. Then it will be time for that most sacred of pre-shoot rituals: the planting of the wind flags. Once the sun goes down, the four-time champion will retreat to his camper to read targets. To study sheet after sheet of flimsy white cardboard stock, divining a logic in the frayed edges of 6-millimeter pockmarks. Figuring out why that fifth shot landed a tenth of an inch to the right of the first four.

Buddha said, "Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it." But don't ask Tony about that. He's got things to do tonight.

Let the Games Begin
the first competitor shows up at george Kelbly's place on May 8, a full 17 days before Super Shoot XXXIII begins. By the eve of the competition, the central Ohio farm and rifle range is packed with shooters and their pick-ups, pop-top campers...and guns. Lots of tricked-out guns.

Their owners are mostly rumpled retirees clad in orange glasses and drab clothing. Ball caps and earmuffs. All toting $2,500 guns with $1,000 scopes. They make their way along the gravel road that runs behind the firing benches, like a bunch of hot-rodders cruising Main Street on a Saturday night. Guys trying to look casual, like they don't give a damn. Rifles slung over their shoulders, every gun decorated in a way that screams, "Look at me!" Intricate geometric patterns, iridescent finishes, stripes and flames. Rich wood grains and faux wood grains, American flags and Confederate flags. Metallic pinks and purples that would put Malibu Barbie to shame. Even a coiled snake that apparently goes by the name of Bad JuJu.

"Take a look at a guy's gun, and that's the dream car he never had," says Kelbly, a barrel-chested bricklayer turned rifle maker. He says this from his office, where a glistening candy-apple-red number sits on display.

Kelbly and his family have played host to this event for 30 years running, and he's shot in each of the 32 prior Super Shoots. He's won national and international benchrest shooting championships, but never the Super Shoot. "I've always thought the nationals were more important," he explains, trying very hard to sound like someone who can't taste the sour grapes.

But his son Jim, who will preside over the next four days of competition as shootmaster, sees things differently. "The Super Shoot is the World Series of benchrest," he says. "It attracts the biggest numbers by far." Indeed, nationals-the next largest participation event-usually counts somewhere from 170 to 220 shooters. The 2005 Super Shoot has registered some 330 entrants. And that's down 10 percent from the previous year.

Whthe popularity? Benchrest shooting is not exactly professional golf, so the minor conveniences offered by the Kelblys-a campground, free electricity hook-ups, egg salad sandwiches on Wonder bread for $2-are as close as many competitors will ever come to the manicured greens and plush accommodations Tiger Woods enjoys when he plays at Augusta National. Plus, the Super Shoot is the social registry of benchrest, a fraternity (and sorority) that counts maybe 500 regular competitors. "All the top shooters are here," says Jim Kelbly. Indeed, the five highest-scoring members of the sport's hall of fame will take part in the 2005 contest.

The event attracts not only competitors from across the country but also international shooters, who come from Europe, Asia and even Africa to test their mettle in the rolling hills and swirling winds of North Lawrence, Ohio. Frizza Gien, who's made the trip from Milan, sums it up. "The Super Shoot is"-how you say in English?-"the Super Shoot. It's the biggest match in the world."

One Clean Hole
it's hard to say where, exactly, benchrest shooting got its start. Certainly, the discipline owes a debt of gratitude to medieval archery contests, where the most skilled bowmen-ala Robin Hood-were reputed to split their opponents' arrow shafts. With the advent of the rifle came the idea of shooting from a rest (a stationary object) to improve accuracy, and accounts from frontier America tell of marksmen using rests to better their chances of hitting fixed targets at a distance. But it wasn't until 1944 that the first benchrest rifle association was born. The organization's ominous-sounding name-the Puget Sound Snipers Congress-belied a more mundane identity: a bunch of guys sitting at benches, shooting at paper targets. Like so many other things, benchrest shooting is best explained not by what it is but by what it strives for: the clean hole. That's five (or sometimes 10) rifle shots buried in exactly the same spot on the target. It makes no difference where on the target the shots fall. The only thing that matters is how close the shots are to one another.

As the sport's name suggests, competitors take aim from concrete benches, their rifles perched atop vice-like rests and sandbags for stability. Shooters sit on stools and fire at targets usually 100 or 200 yards away. In competition, they have a set amount of time-typically 7 to 15 minutes-to shoot a group of 5 or 10 shots. Judges measure the distance between the centers of the two shots that land farthest apart.

Benchrest rifles can be divided into two major categories: so-called light and heavy varmint. The guns, most of which shoot 6mm bullets, are essentially the steroid-pumped cousins of highly accurate rifles farmers and ranchers favored for shooting vermin, which benchresters loosely define as animals that are both a nuisance and inedible. (If you want to avoid a lengthy discussion at a benchrest competition, do not engage certain shooters in a discussion of whether skunks are inedible or simply foul-tasting.)

If golf is a game of inches, then benchrest is a game of millimeters. Using micrometers, judges score groups to the thousandth of an inch. Veteran shooters consistently register groups separated by less than a quarter-inch, and most competitions see their fair share of "zero groups," where all the shots fall within a tenth of an inch.

Still, in its 54 years of existence, the National Bench Rest Shooters Association has yet to certify the fabled "clean hole." But riflemen have come (almost literally) within a hairbreadth of shooting one: In 1973, Mac MacMillan took five shots from 100 yards that landed less than one one-hundredth (0.01) of an inch apart.

Just about any benchrest shooter will tell you that the quest for the clean hole is exactly that-a quest. But perhaps it's best that way. After all, when perfection becomes easy, it becomes cheap. Boring, even. Just look at the 300 game in bowling. Golf's hole-in-one. The "perfect" 10 in gymnastics. No, the clean hole is no more attainable than the Holy Grail or a snapshot of Sasquatch. And that's exactly what makes it worth chasing.

Action in the Pits
the final day of practice bruises my eardrums, in spite of the tarmac-caliber hearing protection I've purchased. Hundreds of shooters take their turns at the range's 60 concrete benches, filling the air with an irregular drumbeat of blasts. I can-no kidding-feel my heart thrump when I wander too close to the firing line.

At speeds of more than 3,000 feet per second, the shots whistle over rows of colorful "flags"-contraptions made up mostly of pinwheels, flat plates and tails, their parts whirling and flapping in the service of ever-shifting gusts. These devices serve as benchrest's Rosetta stones, translating invisible breezes into messages that tell competitors how to keep their bullets from straying.

At 5 o'clock in the evening, the range goes still. Looking like refugees from an Easter egg hunt, throngs of shooters venture forth onto the green field for the final planting of flags for the next day's competition. There's a lot of hand gesturing, hollering, uprooting and repositioning of bright plastic lawn-duck-wannabes.

Once he's finished stationing his flags, Tony Boyer looks out over the hurly-burly, his hands pushed down in the pockets of his plaid wool jacket. A retired electrical lineman from Keezletown, Va., Boyer cuts an unassuming figure in a camouflage cap, dark slacks and black orthopedic shoes. His weather-lined face looks older than its 65 years. "It's not the age, it's the miles," he says, unsmiling, in a twang that stretches out all the long vowels. "They'll tell you, 'Work outside, you'll live longer.' Don't believe that."

Boyer walks off, and someone says, "There goes the Arnold Palmer and Sammy Snead of benchrest, all wrapped up in one." Indeed, Boyer has won all the sport's major competitions-Super Shoot, nationals, worlds-multiple times, and has scored twice as many hall of fame points (the coin of the benchrest realm) as any other shooter in history. His discipline is legendary, his mystique Yoda-like.

"Tony is the first one to fire a shot in the morning, the last to leave in the evening," says Manny Garcia, a Florida surgeon who's competed against Boyer for a quarter century. "There's a silent wall that separates him from you, me and everybody else."

No move of Boyer's goes unnoticed, no technique uncopied. "If Tony put a beer can on the end of his barrel," Jim Kelbly says, "there'd be 20 guys at the next match with beer cans at the end of theirs." As the sky dims, most folks head to their trailers for dinner and drinks. Down on "Alabama Alley," they swig moasy, it becomes cheap. Boring, even. Just look at the 300 game in bowling. Golf's hole-in-one. The "perfect" 10 in gymnastics. No, the clean hole is no more attainable than the Holy Grail or a snapshot of Sasquatch. And that's exactly what makes it worth chasing.

Noodlin'

outdoorlife-editor — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:26:32 -0400

Lee McFarlin learned pretty early on that catfish grabbing was not for the faint of heart. "When I was a
young kid, they called my dad and asked us to come down to the Cimarron River to look for a noodler," he recalls. It seems a local man had disappeared while searching for flatheads in the red-clay waters of a northern Oklahoma waterway. Like McFarlin and his father, this fellow was a noodler, a fisherman who pursued his whiskered quarry without such amenities as rods, reels or bait, preferring instead to rely on the 10 lures Mother Nature had secured to his two hands.

"We all figured he'd gotten himself killed," McFarlin says as we loiter in his driveway, "but we didn't know for sure." Well, not until a search party pulled his waterlogged corpse from the Cimarron two days later. "His skull was crushed," remembers McFarlin. "He had his arm deep in a hole, and a beaver came up and crunched him while he was going at it." In case I have failed to grasp his meaning, McFarlin uses his hands and my head to reenact the scene. It sets me to thinking about the size of a beaver big enough to crush a man's head in its maw, and why it would want to.

McFarlin's pal Doug Hutchinson shakes his head and lets out a quiet whistle to underscore the tale. Then he returns to the task at hand-skinning

the 3-foot-long flathead he and McFarlin have just pulled from the waters of a nearby lake. A wet sucking sound cuts the hot, still air as Hutchinson divorces the skin from its owner.

"To really understand noodling," says McFarlin, turning over a fillet knife in his hands, "you've got to get in and try it. You can't just sit on the sidelines." He grins, and his carroty eyebrows dance above his pale blue eyes. "It's not a spectator sport."

Stick Your
Hand in There

McFarlin has a stump speech he likes to deliver about noodling. His teenage son, who shares his father's red hair, blue eyes and passion for handfishing, has heard the oration so many times he now does a passable imitation. "When the wheat starts to turn," he intones in an exaggerated bassa voce, "that means it's noodling season."

Right around Memorial Day, as
Oklahoma's wavin' wheat takes on an amber hue, catfish find their way to the warm shallows to spawn. After the
females lay their eggs, the males stand sentry over the nests, aerating their broods and chasing off predators.

Equipped with only their bare hands and a hard-won knowledge of local catfish breeding haunts, McFarlin and his intrepid ilk spend much of the late spring and early summer waist-deep in the Sooner State's lakes and rivers. Systematically canvassing an underwater network of nooks and crannies known only to them and their inner noodling circles, they probe under submerged rocks and in deep holes. Their hope is to connect with the well-muscled body of a flathead (the only type of catfish that can legally be taken by hand in Oklahoma), or at least a cache of eggs. "If you can't find that fish," McFarlin explains, "smack those eggs"-a rubbery glob. "Then raise your hand up, and he'll be right there biting you."

With a little luck, the noodler jams his thumbs into the corners of the fish's mouth and hooks his fingers under its gills, affording a firm hold on the fish and offering protection from the thousands of tiny maxillary teeth that carpet its jaws. So long as the noodler is able to maintain his grip and keep the fish confined to its lair, the cat will have little chance of wrestling free. Then it's "just"-as McFarlin puts it-a matter of immobilizing the fish. Usually that involves clenching the cat's tail in a bone-crunching grip or, with a big fish, simultaneously bear-hugging and sitting on it. Once subdued, the fish is put on the stringer, which might present a whole new set of problems if the cat is still feisty.

Not surprisingly, few catches go by the book. For starters, finng a catfish nest is no simple task. It could be
under a rock, inside a submerged oil drum, beneath a brush pile or under a rotted tree. Or in an unassuming hole 9 feet below the surface of a silt-clouded lake. And every time noodlers stick their hands into one of these would-be catfish motels, it's a leap of faith. For when it comes to picking out nursery space, catfish share an aesthetic with numerous other forms of marine life.

"When you reach into a hole, especially in a river, you never know what you'll find," says Danny King, a veteran noodler whose forays into dark orifices have met with alligator gars, loggerhead turtles, water moccasins and, thankfully, the occasional catfish. "Those big holes could be three blocks long, and everything in that part of the river is trapped right in that hole. So when you stick your hand in there, you're just telling yourself, 'Lord, I hope all I feel is a fish.'"

Then there's the catfish itself, a member of a family of barbeled brutes whose smooth, scaleless skin lends the sport its name-sort of. "That son of a gun is like a wet noodle when you try to catch him," McFarlin says. "He's just slimy, slippery." So the only way to get hold of one is by its maw.

Although no rougher than dull saw blades, the fish's many rows of inward-facing teeth present a daunting challenge to even the most seasoned noodler. If a big cat clamps down on exposed flesh, it begins gyrating wildly. With room to spin, it will whittle the extremity down to the bone-and that's if you're lucky.
"Once they start rolling, you're not going to stop them," says McFarlin. "Just roll with them, and pretty soon they'll let go." He waits a beat. "So long as they don't drown you first."

But teeth aren't the only weapons in a catfish's arsenal. With only a few feet to accelerate, the smallest flatheads are capable of delivering bruising blows. And big flatheads (the fish have been known to exceed 120 pounds) can knock grown men clean off their feet and crack a few ribs in the process.

Even a catfish's hiding place can become a potentially lethal man trap. "You'll be underwater with your hand way up in a little hole-and what I'm calling a little hole is one that's real tight around your arm-and all of a sudden you're out of air," says McFarlin. "You'll literally have to tell yourself, 'Calm down,' and remember how you got in there. Because that's the only way you're going to get your arm back out of the hole."

Noodling, says King, takes a rare type of person. "You've got to be about half crazy."

[pagebreak]
It Works"]
Trouble Is,
It Works

Back in 1775, a trader and historian named James Adair described "a surprising method of fishing under the edges of rocks" employed by Southern Indians. "They pull off their red breeches, or their long slip of Stroud cloth," wrote Adair, "and wrapping it round their arm, so as to reach the lower part of the palm of their right hand, they dive under the rock where the cat-fish lie to shelter themselves from the scorching beams of the sun." When the "fierce aquatic animals" lock down on the fleshy bait, the diver "seizes the voracious fish by his tender parts, hath a sharp struggle with it against the crevices of the rock, and at last brings it safe ashore."

Why the Indians first chose to forgo fishhooks and spears in favor of fingers is anyone's guess. But more than two centuries later, their legacy of noodling (or, as it is variously known around the country, hoggin', doggin', thumpin', stumpin', grabbin', grapplin', grabblin' and ticklin') survives. Catfishing by hand is, perhaps, one of the original extreme sports. But unlike so many adrenalized pursuits, it owes its continued existence-at least in part-to its very utility.

"I don't know of any way you can catch more fat fish and put more meat in your freezer than you can by noodling," McFarlin says. "There's times I've put thirty quart bags of fillets in my freezer from one afternoon of fishing. I've cleaned them till my fillet knives got hot, let the knives cool down for an hour, then gone out and started at them again."

Tales of too-hot-to-handle knives, like many a noodling yarn, have a
certain fish-story quality to them. But fish biologist Dana Winkelman, Ph.D., has studied catfishing extensively and has found one kernel of truth: Seasoned catfish grabbers are remarkably effective. "Their catch rates are just phenomenal," he says. "They never get skunked. Never."

Perhaps it is noodling's very effectiveness that has led the vast majority of states to outlaw it. In Texas, the
legislature has classified catfish
grabbing-along with misdeeds such as DWI and public intoxication-
as a class-C misdemeanor, saddling noodlers with criminal records and fines of up to $500. Larry Young, the state's chief of fisheries enforcement, explains the prohibition as "basically a resource issue. The people that engage in this type of activity on a consistent basis generally take the bigger fish and deplete the resource of the bigger spawning fish."

Winkelman, for one, questions this reasoning. "The idea that noodlers are catching bigger fish just doesn't pan out," he says. "And as for spawning, it doesn't really matter that you caught the fish a week before or a week after the spawn. Either way, that fish is not going to spawn the next year."

He concedes noodling could pose a threat to catfish populations. "If a lot of people did it, it would be a problem," he says. Try as I might, I can't envision circumstances that would ignite a mass noodling movement.

In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the creature Gollum brings noodling to the big screen when he snatches a catfish from a cave pool with his bare hands, then devours it raw. Sadly for the sport, when it comes to role models, you can't do much worse than Gollum.

Stop Me
Before I Noodle

Noodling's image problem isn't surprising. In the fishing hierarchy, where you are what you catch, catfish rank low. Consequently, chances are you won't come across any noodlers who are doctors, lawyers or corporate executives. Noodlers generally are guys who aren't afraid to get dirty.

Take, for example, the 2001 documentary about the sport, Okie Noodling. The film focuses on four seasoned catfish grabbers-a janitor, a mechanic, a sanitation worker and McFarlin, a plumber. "Take a look at noodlers," says McFarlin. "They're all rugged. Sorta like Dan Haggerty. You know who Dan Haggerty was, right?"

I stare back blankly.

"You know, Grizzly Adams."

A tour of McFarlin's home helps to reinforce his point. It houses mounted bucks, elk and trout, a freezer full of venison, bass and flatheads, and his pets-a red heeletimes I've put thirty quart bags of fillets in my freezer from one afternoon of fishing. I've cleaned them till my fillet knives got hot, let the knives cool down for an hour, then gone out and started at them again."

Tales of too-hot-to-handle knives, like many a noodling yarn, have a
certain fish-story quality to them. But fish biologist Dana Winkelman, Ph.D., has studied catfishing extensively and has found one kernel of truth: Seasoned catfish grabbers are remarkably effective. "Their catch rates are just phenomenal," he says. "They never get skunked. Never."

Perhaps it is noodling's very effectiveness that has led the vast majority of states to outlaw it. In Texas, the
legislature has classified catfish
grabbing-along with misdeeds such as DWI and public intoxication-
as a class-C misdemeanor, saddling noodlers with criminal records and fines of up to $500. Larry Young, the state's chief of fisheries enforcement, explains the prohibition as "basically a resource issue. The people that engage in this type of activity on a consistent basis generally take the bigger fish and deplete the resource of the bigger spawning fish."

Winkelman, for one, questions this reasoning. "The idea that noodlers are catching bigger fish just doesn't pan out," he says. "And as for spawning, it doesn't really matter that you caught the fish a week before or a week after the spawn. Either way, that fish is not going to spawn the next year."

He concedes noodling could pose a threat to catfish populations. "If a lot of people did it, it would be a problem," he says. Try as I might, I can't envision circumstances that would ignite a mass noodling movement.

In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the creature Gollum brings noodling to the big screen when he snatches a catfish from a cave pool with his bare hands, then devours it raw. Sadly for the sport, when it comes to role models, you can't do much worse than Gollum.

Stop Me
Before I Noodle

Okie Noodling - Midwest

outdoorlife-editor — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:26:29 -0400

When Lee McFarlin's dad first took him noodling, he gave Lee a simple assignment. "Son," McFarlin remembers his father, Arthur, saying, "just stick your foot in that hole and don't let that fish out."

The assignment, McFarlin concedes, is pretty much the same as the one he has just given me.

At the moment, I'm shoulder deep in the silt-choked shallows of Lake Carl Blackwell, a dingy, man-made water hole in northern Oklahoma. With my chest pressed against
the edge of a boat launch and my
appendages wedged into various
underwater openings, I'm doing my darnedest to ensure that the shovel-nosed brute that McFarlin, a plumber by trade, and his buddy Doug Hutch-inson have trapped under the launch does not escape.

"Now when your daddy says, 'You either block it or else,'" remembers McFarlin, drops of water raining off his tangerine-colored beard as he lets the last line hang in the air, "that fish ain't gettin' by you." McFarlin grins. Hutchinson giggles. I ball up my fingers and hope they don't look too much like catfish bait.
"Just remember," McFarlin tells me as he resumes probing the opaque
waters with his hands, "a noodler's worst enemy is a good imagination."

Occupational Hazards

Right around Memorial Day, when the sun bakes the wheat golden brown, catfish seek out the warm shallows of Oklahoma's lakes and rivers to spawn. After the females lay eggs, the males stand guard over their incipient offspring. If you're a noodler, this is the moment you live for.

A rare and, some would say, crazy breed of fisherman, noodlers (or, if you prefer, hoggers, doggers, thumpers, grabbers, grapplers or grabblers) stalk their prey, the egg-guarding male flathead catfish, armed only with their hands, an encyclopedic knowledge of local fishing holes and a general sense that everything will work out in the end. "I've been doing this since second grade," McFarlin tells me as he waves 10 fingers in front of his face, "and they're all there. Count 'em."

We're slapping mosquitoes and nursing sweaty beers at the Okie Noodling Festival in Pauls Valley, Okla., where a dollar will get you your picture taken with a gigantic flathead and two dollars will get you, well, two pictures of you with two gigantic flatheads. The festival is the closest thing the sport has to a Super Bowl, and believe me, it's not very close.

While scores of freshly noodled flatheads (the only type of cat that can be legally taken by hand in Oklahoma) await the deep fryer in holding pools outside of Bob's Pig Shop, McFarlin and a few pals are explaining some of the occupational hazards of catfish grabbing. For starters, catfish lay their eggs in some of the darkest, most godforsaken nooks and crannies imaginable. Underneath brush piles. In submerged oil drums. Or maybe at the bottom of a deep hole only a sliver bigger than the circumference of your arm. "You'll go in, you'll be after that fish, you'll twist around and all of a sudden"-McFarlin makes a whooshing sound-"you'll be out of air. And then you'll realize your arm's stuck."

Of course, when you're probing dark recesses at the bottoms of lakes and rivers, catfish may not be all that you find. "Once I got hold of a big old thirty- or forty-pound loggerhead turtle," says Danny King, a veteran noodler with a plum-size plug of tobacco in his cheek. "I thought I had him turned with his head facing away from me. But when I pulled him up above the water, his head was facing me. Well, he stuck his neck out and bit my bib coveralls. But he didn't get any of the meat on my leg or anything."

Even if you're fortunate enough to avoid the turtles, beavers, snakes and alligator gar, that still leaves you with one more big problem-the catfish themselves. Needing only a few feet to accelerate, smaller cats can deliver lung-emptying blows, while bigger ones can knock a man clean off his feet and crack a few ribs in the prrocess.

As far as anyone can tell, the sport's name derives from the fish's smooth, scaleless skin. "That son of a gun is like a wet noodle when you try to catch him," says McFarlin, "just slimy, slippery." Consequently, a noodler lands a catfish by wedging his thumbs into the corners of its mouth and hooking his fingers up under the gills. So long as you keep your thumbs lodged in the crook of the fish's maw, McFarlin explains, you'll avoid the countless
minuscule teeth that carpet its jaws.

While no sharper than heavy-grade sandpaper, the legions of inward-
facing teeth can spell big trouble for noodlers. If a cat manages to clamp down on your hand-or worse, your arm-the fish metamorphoses into a barbeled buzz saw, gyrating wildly as it attempts to strip the meat from whatever offending appendage it has between its mandibles. At best, you'll lose a little flesh in the encounter. At worst, McFarlin tells me moments
after I've agreed to join him on a noodling expedition, you'll drown.

"It's All Noodlin'"

At first, my noodling baptism goes fine; it's all empty holes and long-winded stories. But when Hutchinson homes in on a flathead lounging under a boat launch, I find myself nervously scrambling to the side of the launch to serve as human caulking, my body plugging any potential escape route.

While McFarlin and Hutchinson probe unseen recesses beneath the launch, I try to clear my head of every noodling tale I've heard. Ten, I say to myself. Ten. As in, I will have ten fingers when I leave this lake.
Mercifully, Hutchinson soon manages to get ahold of the cat's tail, then immobilizes the fish with a bone-crunching squeeze. McFarlin works his hands up under the fish's gills, jams his thumbs into the crooks of its mouth and eventually strings it. After shoving my fingers into the flathead's maw for a brief, cautionary lesson-"See how them teeth could rip you to shreds?"-he yanks tomorrow's fish fry from its refuge beneath the launch.

Back at his house, McFarlin is introducing me to his pet bobcats when the phone in his den rings. Seems that somebody needs a line unclogged. Lee McFarlin, plumber, to the rescue.

"So much for your Saturday night," I say. But McFarlin just grins. "One way or the other," he says, "it's all noodlin'."

The Snapper Grabbler

outdoorlife-editor — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 20:00:00 -0400

"YOU KNOW,I'VE ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED IN ANYTHING I COULD PICK UP THAT WOULD MAKEEVERYBODY AROUND ME HAUL ASS." —HAL COLEMAN, TURTLE EXTRACTION SPECIALIST

"NAH, THEREAREN'T ANY COTTONMOUTHS IN THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY," says Hal Coleman ashe shoves his right arm deep under the bank of a sewage-colored retention pond."We do have copperheads,"—with his free hand, he points to thesnakeskin that encircles the crown of his soft, wide-brimmed hat—"but theydon't like water. Of course, there are some nasty water snakes here." Hegrins a big, toothy grin. "And they will bite the crap out of you."

Coleman isplaying to the crowd, and five of the six members of the media clustered aroundhim—the cameraman from the outdoor television show, the director, the twomagazine photographers and me—smile politely. The sixth person, host of thetelevision show, is standing hip-deep in the pond next to Coleman, hamming itup for the camera. It's a classic deer-in-headlights routine: wide eyes, frozengrimace, lips curled back to expose gritted teeth.

We all growquiet, a reverent congregation gathered around Coleman's half-submerged figure.Only this is no baptism. It's a turtle hunt.

"Whoa,"he says in a husky whisper. "Whooooaaa." We brace ourselves,anticipating the appearance of a reptile as big around as a manhole cover. Thecameraman scrambles closer to get a better angle for the shot. In an instant,Coleman's hand breaks the surface and...nothing. He shakes his head and returnsthe rod to his TV-host sidekick, who holds an empty duffle bag waiting to befilled with turtles.

"That's aslicked-out hole," says Coleman, rubbing his thumb back and forth acrossthe pads of his fingers. "There's been a turtle swimming in and out ofthere. You can feel where the smooth part of his belly has worn itslick."

Coleman moves upthe bank a little ways, and the media clump follows. As he goes, he fingersevery hidden nook and cranny, reading its unseen surfaces like Braille.Shutters click. Video rolls. A boom mike lurks just outside the frame. All todocument a guy catching a snapping turtle with his bare hands. Or so wehope.

SOMETHING TODO

ROSWELL, GEORGIA,HAS been home to the Coleman family since 1837, and home to big snappingturtles much longer. Hal Coleman doesn't know when the two groups first crossedpaths, but by the time he jumped into a creek as a teenager to wrestle out hisfirst snapper, he'd been listening to his grandfather's stories of turtlegrabbling for most of his life.

Grabbling?

"The sport oractivity of sticking your arm into a hole underneath the bank to catchsomething," says Coleman. "It's always been called grabbling aroundhere." But what you're after and what you find, he adds, can be twodifferent things. "It could be a snake. A muskrat. A beaver. Or acatfish." Even, thankfully, a snapping turtle.

Common snapperslive in fresh water throughout the U.S. and can grow as large as 60 pounds.They eat fish, bugs, dead things and the occasional duckling. Their cousins,alligator snappers, have been known to have heads as big as paint buckets andbodies the size of coffee tables, but you won't find those brutes in thefoothills of the North Georgia Mountains. "The elevation's too high,"says Coleman.

There's atendency to believe everything Coleman says when he speaks about snappingturtles. Perhaps it's his delivery—slow and chicken-fried, as charming andpersuasive as a country preacher's. Or maybe it's the long open face andlaughing green-gray eyes. Most likely it's the graveyard of snapper shellsadorning the reception area of his pest-control business on the outskirts ofAtlanta.

"Yeah, Icaught all of those," he says.

I count the emptycarapaces hanging on the wall. "So," I ask, "you've caught fifteensnappers by hand?"

"Oh, no. I'vecaught hundreds of them. Those are just the ones I hung up."

It's the daybefore our retention pond adventure, and I've come to visit Coleman at hisheadquarters for a primer on all things turtle. He ushers me back to hisprivate office, a place that Martha Stewart has clearly never seen. Onebookcase is filled with skulls—anaconda, sawfish, antelope, snapping turtle,bobcat, shark, pronghorn and coyote. "I probably ate that one," hesays, tapping a snapping turtle skull.

A 15-footreticulated python skin stretches from one wall to another, kept company byempty hornets' nests, a colony of beaver pelts and a gallery of mounted exoticinsects. And then there's the really creepy stuff. The bookcase is filled withtarantulas and scorpions. Live tarantulas and scorpions.

He switches on ablack light over a terrarium, and the scorpion inside fluoresces like a whiteT-shirt in a disco. "Their exoskeletons glow. All species of scorpion glowunder black light," says Coleman. I knit my brow and nod, thinking only:Please don't ask me to hold that thing.

He doesn't.

A NICE MOUTHFULOF FINGERS AND TOES

EVENTUALLY,COLEMAN PLUNKS himself behind his desk to talk turtle. "For grabbling, whatyou need is a creek or a pond that's not too big. In the really big ones, thewater has washed out caverns under the bank that might go a dozen feetback." Which can be a problem, because it's those holes where snappersspend most of their days. "And if that hole's too deep, you can't get towhere the turtles are."

As cold-bloodedcreatures, snappers lack the ability to regulate their body temperatures, whichis why some nights you'll find them warming themselves on asphalt highways. Andthat's also why Coleman goes looking for them in shallow creeks and ponds withlittle or no tree cover. "The warmer the water," he says, "thehigher the concentration of turtles."

Grabblingrequires no sonar, bait, tackle or hooks. You just climb into the water andstart feeling along the underside of the bank for a turtle in its lair. If yourfingers encounter something "turtlish," says Coleman, gingerly run themover the creature to get the lay of the reptilian landscape. "If he'sfacing out toward you and you feel his head, just reach around behind his neckand grab him." This approach, he admits, is not for the faint of heart."It takes nerve, but once you've got him by the neck, he can't bite you.Then all you have to do is keep pulling, and he'll come out of there." Hepauses. "Just don't let go." Or? "You're gonna getsnapped."

If you can't findthe snapper's head (either because it's retracted or because the turtle isturned away from you), feel along the edge of its shell until you find thejagged area directly above the tail. "Then just reach down and grab histail," says Coleman, "and start pulling." Extracting a turtle byits tail, he says, requires considerably more work than the neckyank method.When you pull a snapper out of its lair backward, it will splay its legs anddig its claws into roots, rocks and anything else within reach, making theextraction process slightly easier than raising the Titanic. "A smallturtle—ten pounds or so—is unbelievably strong," says Coleman. "Andhe'll turn around and try to bite you."

Ah, yes, thebiting thing again. With powerful, beaklike jaws and necks that can stretchtwo-thirds the length of their shells, snappers can inflict serious injury."One time, a buddy of mine got bit so bad his finger looked like it hadbeen chopped by a butcher knife," says Coleman. Still, he has yet to seethe fabled bite that cleaves the finger clean off. Coleman himself has beenbitten only once—on the forearm. "I had long sleeves on, so it didn't cutmy arm so much as it totally bruised it. From my elbow to my wrist, everythingjust mounded up and turned black and blue immediately."

Somehow, theepisode didn't dampen Coleman's enthusiasm for grabbling. "You'll seetomorrow," he says as he shows me the skin of an 11-foot diamondbackrattlesnake he killed in a cabbage patch. "Turtles aside, it's just a fun,frolicking, social event." A moment later, he's dangling one of his (live)pet scorpions by the tail. "You know, I've always been interested inanything I could pick up that would make everybody around me haul ass." Andit strikes me—not for the first time—that Hal Coleman sees the world a littledifferently from the rest of us.

A TURTLE MANPRACTICES HIS CRAFT

GRABBLING D-DAYBREAKS gray and still, the soupy air ripe with the promise of late-summer rain.Our entourage gathers in the parking lot of Coleman's exterminating business,then heads to a subdivision that looks better suited to an episode of DesperateHousewives than a reptilian wrestling match. But behind the brick colonialswith manicured lawns, we find one of Coleman's favorite grabbling haunts: anunassuming, man-made pond.

This is noprofessional mission. Although Coleman is paid handsomely to remove variousinsects, reptiles and assorted fauna from the violated space of humankind,nobody from the subdivision has contracted him to take snapping turtles fromtheir midst. Then again, the subdivision's pond snappers, which apparentlyhaven't cultivated many friendships among the residents, have no champions herewho will protest Coleman's efforts.

Coleman swaps hisoxford and khakis for a union suit, coveralls and an old slouch hat. The get-upis part Hee Haw, part practicality. "If you wear pants and a shirt, yourshirt comes out and you get rocks and stuff down there," he says. That"stuff" can include the occasional water snake.

Grabblingrequires a sidekick, and today that office falls to O'Neill Williams, Coleman'sbuddy and host of the television show O'Neill Outside. The short butbull-strong Williams plays Costello to Coleman's Abbott, providing comic reliefand toting the sack that will serve as a holding pen for any quarry thegrabbler lands. He also stands ready to drive Coleman to the ER if a snapperruns amok and connects with one of his pal's extremities.

For an hour orso, there's lots of documentation and a few false alarms, but no turtles—or,for that matter, frolicking or fun. Coleman, with media coterie in tow, makeshis way slowly around the pond, methodically combing one empty hole afteranother. By the time he gets to the pond's far end, directly beneath aneffluent pipe that empties into the pond, he's up to his chin in water thatwould send any right-minded individual running for the nearest shower and a jugof anti-bacterial cleanser. But Coleman sloshes ahead stoically, disappearingbehind a clump of alders that crowds the bank.

"Got'im!" his disembodied voice yells a minute later. Up above, we fightthrough the brambles to see what's going on. Coleman's got both hands up underthe muddy bank, and a moment later he pulls out a rather befuddled turtle thesize of a basketball shoe.

"That's notwhat we want," says Coleman in a deflated tone. "That's just a littleold cooter [a soft-shelled turtle]." He lets the creature swim away.

He continues hiswaterlogged lap of the pond, and about three-quarters of the way around, hestrikes pay dirt, ripping a sludge- and leaf-covered snapper from a hole by itstail. "That's a ten-pounder," he says, holding the hissing beast atarm's length. It looks for all the world like some sort of miniature, shelleddinosaur.

The turtletelescopes its mottled brown neck and snaps at Coleman, hoping to connect withsome grabbler flesh, but to no avail. The snap echoes through the sultry airlike the slamming of a thick book, and Coleman deposits the snapper into thesoaked duffle that the wide-eyed Williams has been lugging around the pond.

KUDOS FOR A JOBWELL DONE

TAKING A BREAK,Coleman introduces his latest conquest to a pair of snappers he brought alongin the back of his pickup. "Television insurance," he says with a winkand a smile. These larger, thoroughly ill-tempered models become props for thecameras, as Coleman pretends to pull each from beneath the bank. The two mengrin—Coleman easily, Williams nervously—as they hold up the turtles for a fewsnapshots. Then it's back to the duffle, which Williams shoulders towardColeman's pickup.

"Ouch!"yelps Williams, dropping the sack on a freshly trimmed yard. One of thesnappers, it seems, has gotten a small measure of revenge, biting Williamsthrough the bag.

"Did he getthe meat?" asks Coleman.

"Yeah,"says Williams, rubbing his shoulder blade and scowling. "He got themeat."

"Now we'rehaving fun," says Coleman.

Unceremoniously,Coleman empties the three snappers (now in a sodden scrum, all biting at oneanother) into a tub in the back of his truck, and I ask what he plans to dowith them. "I used to eat them, sometimes fried up with mashed potatoes,gravy and cathead biscuits. But it's just too much work to dress out aturtle."

He climbs downfrom the flatbed, his coveralls and union suit dripping wet. "You know,I'll probably take them up the road to that creek"—he points to a streamabout a half mile away—"and they'll end up crawling home to thispond."

Just then, awoman in a minivan drives up and rolls down the window. A young child sitssilently in the backseat. "Did you catch any?" she asks. Word of theturtle hunt has apparently spread through the neighborhood.

"Yep, we gota few," Coleman says slowly.

"Good,"says the woman. "I'm glad to be rid of those snapping turtles. They werefrightening. Thank you so much."

As she drivesaway, Coleman looks at me and grins. The turtles will be back, and so willhe.

STEP 1 GET WET: To Hal Coleman, snapper grabbling is all about sticking your hand in aslimy hole and seeing what comes out.

STEP 2 GRAB HOLD: In the ideal scenario, the grabbler catches the turtle's head ortail before the turtle catches the grabbler.

STEP 3 MIND YOUR FINGERS: Seldom does a snapping turtle appreciate the grabbler'sefforts. Hence, special care is required.

STEP 4 BAG AND BACK OFF: A vanishing art, grabbling once was considered a legitimateway to get turtle meat.

STEP 5 WILL IT HURT?: O'Neill Williams hefts a sackful of angry snappers, one of whichdemonstrated it could bite through canvas.