Cockfighting bill could alter a way of life

WESTMINISTER - Cradling the big black and white rooster in his arms, Joshua Brock, 15, stroked its feathers, then set it on the ground next to a similar bird tied to a 6-foot nylon cord.

Instantly, the two birds glared malevolently at each other. The neck feathers flared, and in a flash, they became a tangled blur of flailing wings, beaks and feet, battling in the air.

"You don't have to make 'em; they'll just keep going," Joshua said, pulling his rooster away after a few seconds.

Joshua and his dad make no pretense about why buyers across the United States purchase the gamecocks they breed behind their home in the Blue Ridge foothills of rural Oconee County, 135 miles west of Charlotte, N.C.

"They're good fighting chickens," said Ronnie Brock, 50, an affable, soft-spoken man who was wearing a "Property of My Grandkids" T-shirt the day a reporter came visiting.

Cockfighting, where birds are fitted with 2-inch long needlelike steel "gaffs" and fight to the death as spectators bet on their fates, is illegal in South Carolina. But it's not illegal for Brock and an estimated 2,500 other breeders to raise and sell gamecocks in the state.

The S.C. law against cockfighting is one of the nation's weakest.

Animal rights activists and some top state officials and lawmakers want to change that.

A bill, introduced by House Speaker David Wilkins, R-Greenville, would make all aspects of cockfighting - from raising the birds for fighting purposes to staging the fights themselves - a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Currently, it is a misdemeanor with a maximum fine of $100, less than some traffic violations.

In North Carolina, cockfighting is a misdemeanor on first conviction. The law allows a maximum fine of up to $1,000, and repeat offenses are felonies.

Still, the practice continues. Authorities in Union County, N.C., cited dozens of men attending a cockfight about 35 miles south of Charlotte in Union County.

The bill's supporters say they have no easy task. Cockfighting is woven into South Carolina's culture. The University of South Carolina's athletic teams call themselves "The Fighting Gamecocks."

Attorney General Henry McMaster, who is helping push the bill, said, "There are people who think that cockfighting is perfectly OK; it's been going on for a long time in this state, and they don't see any harm in it. There will be organized resistance."

Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, said although he doesn't object to tougher penalties for cockfighting, he will fight attempts to make it illegal to raise gamecocks for sale out of state. "Grit and Steel," the leading national cockfighting magazine, is published in Peeler's hometown of Gaffney.

"It's a big industry up our way," Peeler said.

The catalyst for Wilkins' bill was the indictment and arrest in July of Charles Sharpe, the S.C. Commissioner of Agriculture, on federal charges of taking $15,000 in payoffs to protect a cockfighting ring in Aiken County. In a plea agreement last month, Sharpe pleaded guilty to two of the 12 counts and is awaiting sentencing.

On a hillside behind Ronnie Brock's home, 300 chickens live in rows of cages.

They strut, preen and crow in a spectacular variety of breeds and colors from the deep garnet of the Kelso Reds to the iridescent blue tails of the McLean Hatches.

Brock admits to watching cockfights in Tennessee and elsewhere - he's vague about the locale. But he objects to portrayals by some that he and other cockfighters are lowlifes.

"They can't just classify us as trash and the scum of the earth just because we love chicken fighting," said Brock, a father of five whose full-time job is doing maintenance for the town of Seneca's parks department. "It's just this plain little Joe who goes to work every day, and he's got a little hobby with his chickens," he said. "In my case, it's a livelihood. If I want to fight them, I don't think it's nobody's business. I don't think it's cruel; this is just like a chicken that you're selling to eat."

So far this year, Brock said, he has sold 40 chickens, shipping them to points as far away as New Mexico, one of only two states - the other is Louisiana - where cockfighting remains legal.

Purebred adult gamecocks start at $100; a breeding trio of a rooster and two hens goes for $300 to $400.

Clifton Bryant, a professor of rural sociology at Virginia Tech University, said many of the people involved in cockfighting are country folk who continue to see animals in the same light that most Americans did several generations ago. Cockfighting was illegal in most places then, too; the current S.C. law dates from 1877. But, Bryant said, it was for a different reason than now.

"Cockfighting was condemned simply because you wasted time that you should have been working, doing something productive," he said.

Before the 1930s, Bryant said, most Americans lived on farms and saw animals as devices.

Walt Disney changed that, Bryant said.

"He made animals into little people with fur. And as we became more citified, we changed the way we looked at animals, and in the way we looked at pursuits like hunting and cockfighting," Bryant said.

Most societies have some way of dealing with what might be a basic need to observe violence, Bryant said. Brock said if cockfighting is completely banned, "They're just taking a sport away that they don't really understand. To me, it's like playing a ballgame; it's just that this bird is part of the sport," he said.