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‘It’s In Their Blood’

Cockfighting Defenders Say Public Doesn’t Get What It’s All About

By Kelly Jasper

ELKTON — Ronnie Miller had to ask.

“You’re not one of those animal rights folks, are you?”

Nope. Just a reporter.

“Good, ’cause you know, people are nervous,” he says late one night over the phone. “They’re scared.”

A week later, he asks again, just to be sure. This time he’s leaning out the window of his old GM pickup, flicking cigarette ash to the gravel of a parking lot where he agreed to meet.

It’s a short drive to Miller’s home just north of Elkton’s town limits.

A few friends have gathered by his chicken coops. They’re grilling out tonight. A bonfire roars as the sun sets, and Miller and his friends sit under a carport that shades picnic tables and a refrigerator stocked with Pepsis.

About half are cockfighters. Or, at least half are willing to say so, and be identified in a newspaper story.

“There should be two, three hundred people lined up outside my door,” Miller says of the number of folks in the area that, he claims, fight chickens. But, he adds with a grin, “They’re not as game as their chicken.”

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Miller knows why. Cockfighters are scared, especially lately. Last month, federal indictments were announced against four men authorities allege were connected to a cockpit, called Little Boxwood, outside Stanley.

Authorities raided the place in May. Miller and several friends say they were there that day and often fought at the club.

Fighting roosters isn’t illegal in Virginia, but the men indicted last month were charged with a number of crimes related to the sport: gambling, money laundering and the possession and sale of knives and gaffs.

Gaffs — awl-shaped spikes strapped to the heel of a rooster for a fight — inflict more damage than the claw of a rooster, speeding up a fight. Not all cockfighters use gaffs, but the men say using gaffs is more humane than letting an injured bird suffer through a drawn-out bout.

“It’s not as cruel as people think,” says William Howard Shifflett, who started fighting gamecocks when he was 18. The 63-year-old Elkton resident says he’s raised about 500 birds this year, though he won’t fight them all.

Miller’s raised about 80 or so gamecocks on 7 acres of rolling pasture this year. Eight or nine years ago, Miller, a graying 55-year-old, created the Eastside Game Club. The logo, on the crown of a worn baseball cap he wears, depicts two brawling roosters.

Most weekends, Miller says, he travels to other cockpits, hauling four, five or six roosters to places like Little Boxwood, where he’ll fight, gamble a few dollars  and sometimes referee.

But he’ll host an occasional fight on his farm, too.

“It’s just a hobby. Is that against the law?” Miller asks. “It’s not as bad as people think.”

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Miller’s sitting under the carport, dabbing blood off the back of his hand with a paper towel. Earlier that evening, a rooster scratched and pecked, pulling at his skin when he walked into the pasture.

“You see who got the bloodiest,” he says. “Me.”

Miller was trying to make a point. He walked to the field, picked a young rooster that had never seen a fight and reached to the ground, tucking the bird — a Hatch/Kelso crossbreed — under his arm.

“Just by touching him, he goes for me,” Miller says.

The rooster crows and flails, drawing blood. This is no tame Rhode Island Red, Miller says. These birds are “battlecocks,” and they’re bred ready to fight.

“It’s in their blood,” he explains.

Each bird is tethered to an overturned plastic barrel. While the stags — roosters under a year old — roam freely around the property, older birds are tied to a coop, a few feet from the next rooster. By six or seven months old, Miller says, they get violent.

For two years, they’re kept and fed. A cocktail of vitamins makes them strong, Miller adds.

“We get them healthy, in top shape,” says Roger Kisling Jr. He’s got about 40 roosters at his home near Shenandoah.

The day of a fight, he boxes up a few birds and drives to a cockpit. It’s illegal to drive birds across state lines for fighting, but the cockfighters say they’ll often travel the Valley for a fight.

Each bird is weighed and matched to within 2 ounces of its opponent. They’ll fight to the death, or until one quits. A bird that doesn’t fight is pulled from the ring.

“Forty seconds and it’s over,” says Lee Housden, 39, who started raising gamecocks at his home in Luray about four years ago. “If a chicken doesn’t want to fight, he doesn’t have to.”

Back home though, those birds are often killed, Shifflett says. It makes no sense to breed “weak genes” into another generation of fighters, he explains. “Why would I bring him back to lose again?”

Between matches, a referee checks the gaffs to make sure they’re still straight.

Here in the Valley, Kisling says, cockfighters don’t use the large, hooked knives popular in some other countries, particularly in Asia and Latin America.

“You go to the Philippines. It’s a national sport,” Housden says.

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While far from a national sport, fights at Little Boxwood, the pit raided earlier this year, drew crowds of more than 100 for some bouts.

“Plenty of people come but don’t raise chickens,” Kisling says. “It’s a family thing.”

There’s even a “powder puff” league for women, Miller says.

Come fight time, he adds, he’ll wager a few friendly bets.

“You call it a gentleman’s bet. It’s not an official thing,” he says. “How’s that illegal?”

He’s made $10 here, $20 there.

“I could sit here and say I made $10,000 yesterday fighting chickens. I’d be lying to you,” Miller says.

The indictment handed down against the men at Little Boxwood says purses totaled $21,000 at times. The house, authorities said, made $5,000 a day.

That doesn’t make much sense, Shifflett says. “If they were making that kind of money, there would be more people like this in that area.”

The indictments also allege the concession stand pulled in up to $2,000 a day. But the only things sold there were hot dogs and sodas, Kisling says.

“It’s one of the first rules,” he says. “There are signs: ‘No Alcohol.’ ‘No Gambling.’ If a guy comes in here drunk, we say you have to hit the road, Jack.”

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Cockfighters, Housden says, just want to stay out of trouble. Anybody who values the sport would.

He hands over a copy of a letter to the editor he wrote last week for several newspapers. The letter reads, in part:

“A Saturday night showing of roosters at one of our clubs is cleaner than a Friday night high school football game. We stand on our past record. The record will show as follows: no arrest, no disorderly clubs, no drugs or ‘deals,’ no drive-by shootings, no domestic violence, no contributing to the delinquency, no police call outs. We police ourselves.”

It’s always been that way, Miller says, because the laws on cockfighting don’t make sense.

“There’s too much government,” Miller says. “You can abort a kid, but you can’t fight a rooster.”

He didn’t always feel so marginalized. An American flag used to fly off the corner of his carport, Miller says. A new banner flies there now. Under a picture of two roosters, bold black text reads, “Don’t Judge Me.”

Chicken people, he says, are good people.

Standing in the pasture, Miller looks down to the bird tucked under his arm. “I’m not hurting him,” he says. “He wants to fight.”

And Miller wants to prove it. He hands Kisling a rooster.

They inch closer to each other until the birds charge, tumbling to the ground. They kick, rearing back so their claws meet midair, and peck, each lunging forward to grab some of the other’s molting feathers.

Miller reaches in the tumble to separate the birds. It’s not cockfighting season yet, and he doesn’t want to ruin a prime bird.

Come December, they’ll fight.