Damn. I even previewed and spell checked. :smack:
Was the death part enjoyable as well? This is a real question, not a snarky remark.
Death in the pit is not a frequent occurrence (at least with the styles that I normally watch). Sometimes a good knife or gaff blow will do it. Like two human boxers, it’s similar to a knock out blow.
Please tell me I’m not the only person that laughs when they hear the word ‘Cockfight’
Wait, I thought fighting to the death was the whole point!
Anyway, UB, does it not disturb you that the birds are feeling pain? I know you say it’s what they would do anyway, but even so, is watching critters in pain entertainment?
You got the point wrong.
It doesn’t disturb me that the birds are wounded. I don’t know how much pain that they actually feel. They make no pain noises. They are the type fowl that once they begin to mature they have to be seperated as they will fight another mature male that is seperated by chicken wire through the wire while causing significant damage to themselves because fighting is their nature.
One doesn’t go to see pain. I’ve never seen it either, unless you count favoring an injured body part. One goes to see fights. One respects a much injured roosters desire to continue fighting.
Winning of fights is determined by the last rooster showing fight. In some cases this involves death, most often it does not.
I went to illegal (but nobody was even slightly afraid of arrest, seeing as how the county sheriff was an attendee) cockfights when I was a kid in very rural Alabama. I just can’t get worked up over the inhumanity.
We always had chickens when I was growing up. There’s a reason that a rural analogy for stupid is “that boy is dummer than a hundred chickens”. These things do not have human or even mammalian of any kind intelligence. In addition, cockfighting started by people who just happened to crowd around two roosters fighting to the death for mastery of the harem of hens. (You can have 100 hens in a coop- if you have 2 roosters, one will kill or maim the other but will not share- reminds me of the story about Calvin Coolidge [below]).
Personally I find boxing far more inhumane. This isn’t to say that I still enjoy cockfighting, but it’s mainly because I don’t like the mixing of crowds and rednecks and beer- I’m more of a "national tour of The Producers kinda crowd. But I do have my great-grandfather’s spurs (ca. 1900) and have no harder a time understanding the appeal of the sport than I do horseracing or college basketball.
A few years ago a liberal (by Alabama standards) lawyer named Don Siegelman ran for governor, one of his campaign plans being to start an education lottery. His anti-lottery fanatic aired several commercials showing cockfights as a warning about “what the lottery will lead to…”. It was hysterical. (Siegelman won but wasn’t able to start the lottery due to the “faith based” opposition- I’ve wondered if his victory was by people who thought if elected he’d bring back cockfighting.)
Coolidge story (supposedly true): Silent Cal and Grace Coolidge were touring a chicken farm as part of an agriculture junket and were being given separate tours around the place. Mrs. Coolidge saw a rooster perform an airborn copulation and asked the farmer in attendance “How often does he do that?” and was told “He can do that hundreds of times a day, ma’am.” She smiled and said “Please tell that to the president when he comes by.”
The attendant told the story to Coolidge when he arrived. “Same hen every time?” he asked. “No Mr. President, he copulates with a different hen each time.” “Please tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”
(Cal’s airborn copulations with hundreds of a women a day on the White House lawn became a national embarassment of course, while the FBI was charged with keeping it a secret from the nation that Mrs. Coolidge began giving birth to eggs, but that’s another story.)(
I went to a couple of cockfights a long time ago. The two matches couldn’t have been more dissimilar. One was in a relative clean place and while beer was flowing freely, drunkeness was the exception. The focus seemed to be on the gambling more than anything else. This was before there were Indian casinos or horse tracks so gambling was strictly illegal and not very accessible. I saw one sheriff’s deputy walk around in uniform but no one was arrested.
The other event was far darker in tone. It was in the back room of a bar and it was crowded and hot. The spectators were more interested in seeing birds die than in making bets. I saw drugs (crystal met, I think) change hands several times.
The second place was the one most similar to that described as the typical cockfighting venue during the 2002 election season when the ban was on the list of State Questions. I have never seen a dog fight (illegal here for decades) but my father (former director of OK’s liquor regulation agency) and best friend (former OK state vet board investigator) have both been on raids of them and described them being similar to what I saw at the second event. Even when cockfighting was legal, there was always a tendency for illegal activity to coincide with it. That was probably the biggest factor in getting it banned here.
I have never seen any illegal drug use associated with cockfights myself. Being a meth addict and raising game fowl would be about impossible. It requires too much responsibility. I have conversed with many online game fowl enthusiasts, including ones fighting where it is illegal. Acceptance of hard drug use is simply not there and is heavily disliked because of its bad image. Most places, legal and illegal, are long time pits with family presence, not a gangster presence. There are parents, grandparents, and children at every derby that I’ve ever went to. Not disimilar to any family oriented sport. And the only consumed drug besides beer would be very privately consumed marijuana. Drunken behaviour, excessive use of bad language, and open containers where I watch fights is strictly prohibited and will get you ejected from the venue.