Photo by Robert Burroughs

The sport survives around here — in Escondido, Solana Beach, Harbison Canyon, La Mesa, San Marcos, and Eden Gardens — but that kind of cockfighting is very secretive and done on a small scale

Just across the Colorado River from Blythe, less than a mile into Arizona, there’s a big corrugated tin shed at the end of a dusty gravel road. It looks like some kind of deserted warehouse, rusted and beat up, patched haphazardly, surrounded by a dreary landscape of hot fields dotted with pink and yellow mobile homes. Across the front of this shed is a sign that reads EHRENBERG GAMING CLUB, which sounds like this might be the place where a group of English gentlemen would meet before the fox hunt. But no, this is where the cockfights are held, and on this hazy spring morning, every reputable cockfighter within three hundred miles of the Colorado has come to pit his seven best birds in the Ehrenberg Derby.

This is an event! The parking lot is full of copper-colored Cadillacs, white Continentals with cotton-candy interiors, and black shiny pickups with wire wheels that have never suffered the indignities of a farmer’s muddy fields. And the styles! Here’s a blonde couple in matching black jumpsuits. Over there is a chunky cowboy with a brand-new foot-high Resistol, a heavy string of turquoise beads around his neck, and a row of dollar cigars across his shirt pocket. And here comes a convoy of girls who look like they’re trying out for the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue, packed into obscenely tight brushed denims and mysteriously cantilevered tops invented by brilliant but frustrated engineers.

The cocks rustle and crow in their cages. Old friends meet, slap each other on the back, and pass the bottle around. Little kids wave their gambling money at each other and vow that they’ll run it into a fortune.

By midmorning it’s time to begin, and the crowd moves on inside. The price is ten bucks — five for the admission, and five to become a card-carrying member of the Arizona Game Breeders Association. The shed, with more than 200 cocks in cages, sounds like an orchestra of screeching coronets. But the chicken smell, surprisingly, is hidden beneath the hot people smell and the aroma of chili beans wafting in from the kitchen.

It’s dark inside, with low-slung neon lights over the pits, and huge wall fans blowing fresh air through the shed. There are rows of bleachers on all sides so the spectators can stretch their cowboy boots out in front of them, lean back with a coffee mug full of bourbon, and watch the cockfights in comfort. The Mexicans gravitate to the top where they won’t be seen, the stylers to the bottom where they will be seen, and the heavy gamblers to the middle where they can be heard by all.

When it’s time for the fights to commence, the big red-faced referee, with a voice like a bulldozer starting up on a cold morning, calls for the handlers: “Seven and twenty-eight!” He opens the hog-wire gate and the two handlers, with their birds tucked under their arms, swagger proudly into the pit. They place their birds on the scales to show they’re evenly matched. Then the ref examines the spurs, like long curved needles, which have been fastened to the cocks’ legs, and he wipes them with a wet sponge just to make sure they’re free of any trace of poison that could have accidentally found its way there.

Under the lights the crowd gets a good look at the birds, and more importantly, a good look at the handlers. One is a short smiling Mexican with a huge mustache; he’s handling a red bird. The other handler is a lean farmer in tennis shoes; his cock is gray. They’ve both been seen before and the crowd knows fairly well what kind of birds they raise. Pretty soon the gamblers start calling out their preferences. “I kinda like the gray!” a man shouts. He’s slapping a wad of one-hundred-dollar bills against the back of his hand like a blackjack. “Give a hunnert on the gray!” A high school kid down below stands up, answering loudly, “Hundred on the red!” and the two gamblers’ eyes meet in agreement. Even though a half-dozen signs around the shed say, No Gambling!!!, they are clearly nothing more than the management’s obligatory nod to the state law. While the high-rollers are flashing the big money, the little kids are down below calling five and ten-dollar bets with the same casual confidence; the Mexicans up above are settling all their wagers in rapid Spanish.

The handlers stand back and ruffle up their birds a bit to make them fighting mad. They tuck them between their legs, bend over and coo encouraging things to them. Then they turn and face each other with the cocks on their hips. The handlers thrust them into each other, bang their heads together, insult them, antagonize them for combat. They squat down a few feet apart, the ref barks, “Pit!” and they let them go.

The cocks are such beautiful little things as they face each other. The red bird has all the brilliant green, brown and scarlet colors of a pheasant; and the other bird, called a “gray,” is really more like a golden yellow. They stand stiffly, heads up high, thrusting their stout breasts and bobbing around like they’re ready to take on the whole world. Their wide little eyes are stupidly alert, ignorant, totally game.

Cockfighting is illegal in California, just as it is in most of the country and, in fact, throughout most of the world. But like many other surreptitious acts, it survives in spite of the law because a persistent minority of people enjoy it. San Diego County has its share of cockfighting, too, encouraged in part because of the large rural areas to the east, and partly because of our proximity to Mexico, where cockfighting is very popular. (To participate in American fights, the Mexicans smuggle gamecocks across the border by getting them so drunk they can’t crow, and then hiding them in their coat pockets or under the hood of a car.) The sport survives around here — in Escondido, Solana Beach, Harbison Canyon, La Mesa, San Marcos, and Eden Gardens — but that kind of cockfighting is very secretive and done on a small scale, where two neighbors each think they’ve got the meanest rooster that ever crowed, and after arguing about it for a while they put them in the pit. It could happen in the backyard next door and you’d never know about it.

But the people who are interested in breeding gamecocks in large numbers generally don’t fight them around here, although several of them live in San Diego County. They run them over to Arizona, where cockfighting is legal, and pit them in the big derbies where the real money can be made.

Horace Hackles (he asks that his real name not be used) is one of those people. “Only an idiot would fight cocks in San Diego County,” he whispers, sitting on the dark bleachers at the Ehrenberg Derby, sipping on a cup of Irish coffee. Hackles is a young professional man who has a ranch not far from San Diego where he breeds his birds, like his father before him. His parents came from England and Holland, where the sport also is very popular, and he says he can’t even remember seeing his first cockfight.

Hackles is part of a circle of twenty or so friends who raise gamecocks; each of them has fifty to one hundred fifty birds. “Sometimes we meet in Imperial County. One of the ranchers might donate a quarter of a beef and we have a big barbecue on the river. But no real organized fights are held in San Diego County.”

When they travel the cocks are carried in one car and the fighting paraphernalia in another, so that if they are ever stopped it would be impossible to prove they were on their way to a cockfight. Just taking the roosters out for a drive. (Mere possession of such gear is prima facie evidence of cockfighting, and many breeders leave it in Arizona between fights.)

The Ehrenberg Derby is the kind of event in which Hackles likes to fight his cocks, or the Copperstate Derby, held every February in Goodyear, Arizona. That one is the biggest derby around. The winner takes home about $75,000, and last year it was won by an unknown kid off the street. The chances of that happening are about like the Jay’s Mobil softball team winning the World Series.

Hackles enjoys telling stories about the high-rollers who show up at the big derbies, people like Joe W., of international stature in the mortuary world. “He drives around to all the derbies in a Lincoln, dresses in white buck shoes and spiffy sport coats. He looks like he might be a Mafioso, but he’s really one of the top cockfighters and part of a group of wealthy people who use cockfighting as a pastime.”

Hackles also has a collection of stories about the arrests he and his friends have endured. “One time a group of guys were fighting in a warehouse out in the country and were busted two nights in a row. The first night they had to run into the grape vineyards to get away. One of the guys saw the police coming, ran over to a tractor and greased himself up like he was a farmer working on his machinery. They just cruised right on by him.... The next night one of the guys had to swim the river with a cock in each hand to get away. They were his two best cocks.” Often, though, the busts are less dramatic, merely routine. It’s only a misdemeanor with about a one-hundred-dollar fine. “One time the sheriffs hauled everybody down to the jail. They paid their fines, then went back and finished the fight. That way everybody was satisfied.”

Cockfighting isn’t new to the world. In Europe its history can be traced at least to Elizabethan England, and in India and the Mideast cockfighting is certainly more than a thousand years old. In Latin America, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia there is near-fanatical enthusiasm for the sport. Each culture has its own peculiar folklore surrounding cockfighting. For example, in Bali the fighting spurs can only be sharpened during an eclipse or a dark moon, and they must always be kept out of sight of women. Nearly everywhere gamecocks are seen as masculine symbols of courage and valor. The slang use of the word “cock” in the English language is no accident; it appears in several other languages as well, along with all the easy jokes and vulgar connotations. And nobody I talked to could recall ever having seen a woman handling gamecocks.

Many different styles of cockfighting have developed around the world. The Filipinos and Hawaiians fight with three-inch knives that will slit open a bird’s belly with just one slash; some say that is a more humane way to fight because the fight ends quickly. The Latin Americans fight with razors one and a quarter inches long. For Americans and in most of Europe, the gentleman’s rules of cockfighting have been set forth by Henry Wortham in Wortham’s Rules. They are detailed and complicated: the birds must be matched by weight within two ounces; they are to fight with two-and-one-half-inch needles called “gaffs.” A victory is defined as complete when one bird does not move for three counts of ten and one count of twenty; between counts the handler is allowed to work on his bird to try to revive it. Most reputable cockfighting establishments adhere to these rules.

Cockfighting requires a lot of time and money. A particularly tough chicken can cost up to $500. A broodstock rooster and two hens cost between $150 and $1000, but they may produce one hundred birds in a year, and a successful breeder needs 500 to 1000 birds to rear the dozen or so prime cocks it takes to win a derby. “You pay for an exceptional cock,” Hackles says, “and there are exceptional cocks just like there are exceptional athletes.”

The cocks have to be worked twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. The handler bounces them on their legs to make them strong. He holds them in the pitting stance and tosses them into the air to build up their wings. It takes about fifteen minutes per bird, and this goes on for most of the fighting season, which runs from early December to late May. After that the birds are molting and become very tender for several months.

The birds are fed a special high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet of raw meat, vitamins, and steroids, much like a professional athlete. What that does, at least to a chicken, is make them too tough to eat unless they’ve been pressure-cooked.

A successful cock breeder is a kind of amateur geneticist. Even though many of them have had no formal education, they can tell you all about inbreeding, line-breeding, hybrid vigor, and multigenic traits. It is, after all, careful breeding that has created a monster bird which is so incredibly game that even though it is bleeding to death, with its last throb of life it will lift its head to peck out another bird’s eyes. “If a cock retreats in a fight, the handler will pull its head off immediately, then go home and destroy the whole line,” Hackles says. “It might cost a breeder $10,000 if his cock could have won a fight, but quit.”

Gameness isn’t entirely genetic, however. Almost every handler has a favorite drug he injects into his cocks before pitting time. They say that absolutely every drug has been tried, but none is guaranteed to turn an ordinary cock into Super Chicken. The most common drugs are strychnine and speed, both of which are thought to sharpen a bird’s reflexes. “I used to use speed on my birds,” Hackles says, “but I couldn’t control the dose, so I gave up on it completely. Besides, if somebody were to eat one of those birds it could kill them.”

The science of raising and pitting cocks is only half of cockfighting though. The other half is the betting. The cockfights themselves, after you’ve seen a few, simply aren’t that exciting. It’s the gambling that attracts people. Nearly everyone at a cockfight is betting to some extent, which makes it seem deceptively simple — you just pick a bird you hope will win and call out your odds. If somebody likes that bet, they’ll match you or offer different odds. It’s all done on the honor system and everybody pays up. The odds usually get more extreme as the fight progresses, and sometimes a fight can go on for as long as an hour. The real trick to betting, though, is to know the reputation of the handler. A trainer with winning birds is doing something right, and he’s likely to win again.

Of course, the gambling is illegal, even though the cockfighting may or may not be. “I have no doubt that there are ‘observers’ at all the derbies,” Hackles says. “But I’m convinced that people will always bet on something… dogfights… some of the cowboys have goat fights. I heard that over at the Viejas low-security prison somebody discovered that one scorpion is a pretty good match for a hundred ants, and now the prisoners spend most of their time looking under rocks and gambling with their cigarette money.”

Cockfighting is certainly less bloody than bullfighting, and even boxing. In the Ehrenberg Derby nobody saw more than a few drops of chicken blood all day. The birds are killed, true, but cockfighters find it difficult to understand how that is more offensive than hunting doves or quail for sport. Still, Hackles admits that the sport is controversial. “For some reason cockfighting insults the morality of certain people,” he says. “It’s a cultural thing — urbanites who have anything to do with it have to rationalize it somehow…

“And then we have this thing about imposing our morality on others, even though the people who go to cockfights are so clandestine about it you’d have to go looking for it to be offended.

“Personally,” Hackles argues, “I don’t think the birds feel. Most are stupid sons-of-bitches, and they certainly have no emotions the way we know them. I have difficulty sympathizing with chickens, but if I had the alternative of getting my head jerked off for the stew pot, or fighting, if I were a chicken I’d go out and fight.”

Back in the pit, the red and the gray eye each other for a moment, then slam together in mid-air, each trying to scratch its way over the other so it can cut with its spurs. They fall back, hesitate, then go at it again. They peck at each other’s eyes and flap around in circles trying to keep their balance while they hack blindly with their spurs.

When the crowd sees the birds in action the betting goes wild. “Fifty-forty on the red!” “Hundred-eighty on the red!” “Cincuenta-cuarenta con el rojo!” Everyone seems to know which bird is favored. They can see that the gray is fast and game and spurs high, but the red is much stronger. If the gray doesn’t win quickly it won’t have a chance.

The gray sinks a spur into the red’s breast and they’re locked. The handlers hold the cocks down while the Mexican pulls the spur out of his bird — if the other handler were to pull it out, he might be tempted to twist it around and do even more damage. This time it seems that the spur struck the breast bone and no real harm was done. The farmer spits on his fingers and wipes his bird’s spurs and beak so they’ll enter smoothly again next time.

The Mexican blows under his bird’s tail feathers to cool it off, then takes a sponge and wipes its head. The cocks get hot easily, and when they get too hot they won’t fight; for this reason their feathers are trimmed at the neck and tail. Some handlers say the most important thing in the fights is to keep your cock cool.

They pit the birds again and they fly at each other, pecking and slashing and flapping in a storm of legs and wings and loose feathers. They bounce off each other, and for a moment the gray cock stalls and looks away, stunned. “That bird’s dead!” somebody hollers down from the stands.

The gray’s handler, the farmer, looks to his partner outside the pit and whispers desperately, “Get a bet on the other bird!”

His partner can see that it’s no use, but still he stands up and announces feebly, “Hundred on the red.”

“That’s a bad bet!” somebody shouts back at him. “Bad bet!” the crowd echoes. No one will wager on the injured gray.

The red cock immediately lunges out, climbs over the gray, and sinks a spur into its side. They’re locked again, so the handlers pull them apart, but this time the gray looks bad. He gets doused with cold water, but instead of bringing him back it seems to put him out for good. The farmer gets down on his knees and takes the cock’s comb in his mouth and tries to suck blood back into its head. He plucks feathers from around the bird’s neck, and for a moment it twitches and trembles with life. Finally it vomits up a dark teaspoonful of blood just as the ref calls, “Pit!”

The gray collapses in a heap while the red races over and thrashes around in the pile of feathers trying to roust up a fight. But it isn’t there.

The ref is finishing the final twenty-second count while the red busies himself with pecking out the dead bird’s eyes. Then the red stands tall, puffs up the hackles around his neck to a brilliant glistening halo, and crows louder than any rooster should. The winner.

The Mexican holds up his bird for the crowd to see and they all cheer. But the farmer just picks up his cock by the feet and holds him away so the blood won’t trickle on his shoes. He stalks angrily out of the pit and flings the bird into the nearest garbage can with the beer bottles and paper plates. By the end of the day, dead birds will fill the garbage cans, line the hallways and draw flies under the bleachers.

“It’s too damn hot,” the farmer complains.

“Never fight a gray cock on a cloudy day,” a passerby offers as advice.

One down. Before it’s over there will be 105 fights like this one — 105 winners, 105 dead birds, and maybe $15,000 for the handler with the best record.

A shaky old man with a garden rake goes into the pit and scrapes up the tumble of shredded feathers to make ready for the next fight.