When roosters fight there’s so many rounds. And there’s a referee there. And they go for so much time and then they break them up. And mostly they’ll fight until one of them dies. And the referees will break it up and the team will have the bird in the corner messing with it and trying to make sure it will live, and then they’ll start back up again. The knife fights can go very fast, not always but most of the time yes.
You pay right when you arrive. Then you can enter your rooster. So you get a little section of the barn and where you are at is where all your stuff is. And you don’t want anyone to see what you’re giving your roosters. So the vitamins and the food and stuff – it’s all potential hiding stuff. We would bring in one or two roosters, whatever we would fight. They were brought in in cages and we would get our own spot near the ring. Then we’d find the owner and pay him so we could fight and that was our entrance fee. I’m not sure the cost but I think it was around $35 per bird.
Now there’s a referee, like George was a referee. And it was like a bullfight, you would all stand outside the ring while the birds fight. And they would allow so many minutes and then they break them up just like a fighter. After the first round both birds would usually come out okay, but if it didn’t you might want to shoot up your bird with something real fast to help it. To make sure he gets longevity and stays alive. You might even give it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation so that your bird didn’t die. Each round was about a couple minutes. Birds would usually get to one round and maybe two, but maybe three, maybe three. And people would be cheering and yelling, and the whole time while this is going on people are betting on each other’s birds. Betting while the birds were fighting. The audience is betting with each other and yelling and making bets. I’ll bet you $10 on the Fox bird, I’ll bet you $20 on the other. The betting could get really high up. It was all illegal – all of it. Or I’ll bet $50 on Sam’s bird. But the thing was – which I didn’t really like this part – you had to bet honest people because after the fight was over you went up and collected your money. So you couldn’t be throwing bets out there and not having the money to back it up. Because that would go real bad if you didn’t pay your bet on the fight. The next time they’d seen you they’d ask you to leave. You little such and such, you’re out of here. That’s how they control it.
The ring was made out of fences. The reff would break up the fight, and the people would come in and grab their birds. The reff had done this for years and knew what to do. I think he would whistle and he would say time and they would come in and grab their birds. So there waiting outside of the ring and when the reff says time they would jump the fence and run and they would each grab their birds and they would assess what damage, and what’s going on, and what they need to keep the bird alive. To shoot it up or put salve on it. Not a bandage – salve. Because they couldn’t bandage it because the bird would peck it right back off. And if the bird was valuable they would try to keep it alive. And there would be piles and piles of dead birds. They would throw them out in the back of the barn. And if your bird was halfway alive you would try to bring it back to life so that you could mate him. It was fight until death or till that bird couldn’t fight anymore and it was done. There was no fight left in it. So if that bird was just lying there but it was still alive, you was the loser. If that bird couldn’t fight no more. I never seen a bird revived after this stage so that it could fight again. But if you’re the owner of the bird and you decide you want to try to bring him back to life rather than letting the wound kill it, you could do that. For the winner or the loser either one if it’s your bird you could try. Or you can throw it away in the back in the trash heap with the other birds. They were fighting birds all day long. This would start early in the morning and would last till nightfall. There would be people come in from all over wanting to fight their birds. Not only were the birds worth money, but the bets were money. The people came there just betting.
So we would come to the door with our chickens and we would come to the guy and pay an entrance fee. And then they make us set up and it goes by according to what time you got there that you will be entering in this fight, and this fight. They have fights going on all the time as soon as one fight is done they were lined up. But I think that you had to be there at a certain time to be in this or that type of category. You know like between noon and one these particular fights are going on. Or from 11 to 12. So when you showed up that’s how they would organize what time frame you would be in fightin’.
And the name of our setup was Fox Game and Foul. It would be like “Joneses roosters is next”, or “Fox Game and Foul is next.” It was a business for us. For us, we was selling roosters mostly. But not everyone was selling roosters, some people was just fighting roosters. And George’s two sons were involved in it, they were chicken fighters too. Matt used to be one of the best chicken fighters around. You couldn’t have someone that didn’t know what to do when their chickens go in the ring. They had to know what to do. How to grab the rooster, how to put the knifes on the rooster, what to give to the rooster. If he wasn’t good at all those things he was killing your rooster. And if he wasn’t a good trainer your rooster wouldn’t fight – he would try to run. Actually some roosters would try to run from the fight. Because he hadn’t spiraled it and hadn’t trained it and it didn’t know what to do. If you had a rooster they kept running and wouldn’t fight the other rooster would win. Easy win. Then you put a rooster in there that you didn’t put time into and you didn’t make no money off of it. And usually when the people that were fighting each other rooster-wise, they usually had a bet on the side you know. “I’ll bet $50 on whoever beats his bird,” or “I’ll bet $50 on my own bird.”
And they were keeping track of all the fights to keep trophies. It was like at the end of the day after the fights. It would depend when they ended. It would depend on like when they started, and all the entries, and all the people that had to fight that day. It depended on that based on how many people showed up. When the last one was done some time in the evening – it varied – it varied on the activities of the day. When they were all over that’s when they would make the announcement. They would like come of and say your name and they would say here is yours third place trophy.
We won first place the first time we fought. They were really good roosters; they got first place. After that we didn’t fight our own birds we sold them. We showed ourselves the first time and that’s kinda how we got our name out there. And after the fight people were saying how much for your roosters, and how long you been doing it, and blah blah blah. We entered three roosters that day. But Bob’s uncle was the one that did the training and he’s the one that grabbed the rooster after it slit the other rooster. They were Bob’s roosters but it was Bob’s uncle who first helped us out. And he actually brought a rooster of his own up there too. So it was good that we were all on the same side. You would only put your rooster in one or two fights a day because they were fights to death. You could wind up fighting until the rooster was dead or maybe tell the guy didn’t want to fight his rooster anymore. I think the trophies were given based on how many fights they were in. They didn’t give scores like “oh, that was a nice cut to the right jaw!” Nothing like that, they would just fight till the rooster was dead. I think the trophies were based on how many fights your rooster was in and what category it was.
Roosters didn’t always die. It may have just been so it wouldn’t fight no more. The elimination rounds meant that almost every rooster was dead and that’s why I said there was a big pile of dead roosters out behind the barn. I wasn’t just saying they throw them out there – there was a big pile! And also, you wouldn’t want your bloodline to get out of there, so if you’re rooster was hurt you might kill it yourself to make sure it was dead. Because you didn’t want someone else mating your rooster. If there was no way you could revive it you would kill it. Or if you didn’t want to take the time of healing it back up. You didn’t want someone else to get your bloodline. Because if the cock was a winner then they would have your bloodline. If you train it right but it was a bad bloodline then the rooster didn’t really know what to do. Not all bloodlines was the same and you had to get a good bloodline. It was vitally important if you didn’t have a good bloodline you didn’t have a good rooster. You could be raisin garbage and that’s what you didn’t want to do. Waste your time.
When we won first place I think one of our roosters was still alive. I remember we got money for the trophy. We had to pick between trophy and money and we picked the money. I think it was around 100 bucks. It had to be worth your time and effort and it depended on how big the entry fee was. It could be up to $500 depending on the property and who was running the fights. I remember at times it could be a lot of money to get into the fight and people would be arguing about that, but the bigger the entrance money the more the prize money.
So we won our first fight there and everybody was thinking this company Fox Game and Foul had really good roosters, but actually it was Bob’s uncle who had been doing it for years. And Bob decided to get into it so the name was really from Bob’s uncle. So people recognize the name already. So we raised roosters with the same bloodline as the bloodline that won that night and sold them. And maybe we could make 100 bucks a rooster.
The chicken fights that really stand out to me are the one where we won our rooster clock, and the one that was our first fight. That would sticks in my mind when we were the winner. White Gravel was where we won the clock, and Number 12 Holler’ was where we fought our own birds. All the rest of the fights were just a lot of wheeling and dealing. And you know us – bettin’! We bet on our own birds and sometimes we won pretty good. You have confidence in your own birds because you train them. Or you bet on someone else that you felt was a good trainer. But you know sometimes it happened; the right cut and the whole fight would be over. And those birds had no mercy on each other. They were doing something instinctively – but with razors! Their goal was to kill each other.