Cocks & Cockers

Persons unfamiliar with the ancient sport of cockfighting imagine it to be a sinister and ugly pastime, practiced in the dead of night by sadistic thugs. Such persons know of its existence in the U. S. mainly from publicity given trifling episodes such as the one which occurred last week near Avon, N. Y. State police were advised by agents of the Rochester Humane Society that a cockfight would be held in the cellar of the Canawaugus Inn. When they arrived at the Inn, police found a score of cars, their lights extinguished, parked outside. In the cellar a fairsized crowd was huddled around a tanbark pit, where, in the hard brilliance of electric light, two gamecocks were silently and gracefully tearing each other to pieces. Police arrested 23 spectators and one Gus Kauffman, proprietor of the Inn, summoned a justice of the peace who held court in the Inn, fined each of the spectators $10, Proprietor Kauffman $50. To agents of the Humane Society, which eagerly hunts cockfighters in New York State because it receives all fines imposed, went 20 gamecocks, to be "mercifully despatched."

The cockfight in the Canawaugus Inn last week was unusual only because it was interrupted in a way which cockers are usually clever enough to avoid. Otherwise it greatly resembled hundreds of others held every week all over the U. S. where the sport is illegal in almost every state.

Themistocles imported cockfighting into Greece from Persia. Pedigrees of game-fowl are far more antique than those of any other pure-bred creature. Gamecocks would rather fight than breed or eat. They are trained as carefully as pugilists. First they chase barnyard hens to acquire morale. Wearing steel gaffs--corked except at the tip--they become accustomed to weapons by fighting inferior opponents. They strengthen their leg muscles on treadmills, sweat off fat in a straw box, have their heads shampooed by trainers. Two to three weeks before fighting they spar in spurs covered with leather rolls. Oldtime English trainers fed their fowl a diet of seeds, plants, bark and roots, washed down with stale beer and ale, white wine, sack gin and whiskey. Thirsty trainers drank the mixture themselves, called it cock-bread-ale, cock-ale or cocktails.

Cockfighting is conducted in "mains" of seven or more individual fights. Bettors wager on either the fights or the main. There are 24 different sets of rules, all derived from the Old Royal Pit Rules of England. Usually the pit is a platform about 20 feet in diameter, covered with tanbark, matting or carpet. The birds are put together, beak to beak, in a chalk ring a yard wide at the centre. A rail around the edge of the pit keeps them from falling out but a "squawker'' or a "runner'' can jump the rail if he feels inclined. Fighting cocks wear over their natural spurs either "gaffs"--fine-pointed needles 1 1/2 to 2 2/4 inches long--or "slashers"--fine-edged blades. Before being pitted against each other, the cocks are weighed at ringside scales. Birds differing more than two ounces in weight rarely fight each other.

Gamefowl in the U. S. belong to three main strains: Old English, Oriental and Modern English, a combination of Old English and Oriental. There are more than 250 variations of the three strains, with names like Crazy Snakes, Kansas Sluggers, Gordon Games, Mortgage Lifters, Meal Tickets. Roughhouse Blues. Cockers also belong to three main types. In such pits as "The Sag" in Chicago, disreputable cockers hold ill-conducted contests between second-rate birds. A larger class of cockers are poultry breeders, farmers, country folk who raise gamefowl for profit, pit them at well-advertised meets such as the Orlando tournament in Florida. The third class of cockers are wealthy individuals like the members of the Heel Tap Club, who breed and fight gamecocks for the amusement of making huge sidebets. Lest their names become known, such breeders almost never pit their birds at well-known meets.

Principal cockfighting centres in the U. S. are at Stevenson and Uniontown. Ala.; Biloxi, Miss.; Little Rock; New Orleans; Bartlesville, Okla.; El Paso; Highlandtown, near Baltimore; Memphis; Lexington; the Sierra Game Club in Grass Valley, Calif.; Bismarck, Mo.; Grand Rapids; Newark; Aiken, S. C., where North and South Carolina breeders have been holding interstate mains for two centuries. Because cockfighting, though firmly established and thoroughly organized, needs to be furtively conducted, there are no precise statistics on the sport. Cockers estimate that 1,000 mains are held in the U. S. every year, that wagers, purses and admission fees amount to more than $5,000,000 per year. Three cockfighting periodicals--Grit and Steel, Game Fowl News, Feathered Warrior--have a combined circulation of about 15,000. Second-rate gamecocks can be bought for $20 and more. First-rate gamecocks are given away or stolen, almost never sold.

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