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He sells his birds to clients around the world, and in April he testified in Austin before Senate and House committees to oppose a bill that would outlaw the raising of game birds in Texas. But by 1977, I was traveling with my birds to states where game fowl harvesting was legal. Breeding game chickens is like breeding racehorses. I now own five bloodlines: a straight-comb red, a straight-comb dark-legged, a pea-comb, a black, and what we call a gray—it's actually more or less yellow. Cockfighting, or "harvesting, " as it is often called by breeders, has been illegal in Texas since 1907, but there is no law against raising birds or attending fights. All your plantation owners in early American history, they had their racehorses and their game fowl. Gamefowl for sale in oklahoma. The difference is that we have rules that govern our harvesting. This animal husbandry is where it's all at; the harvesting is just a small part of a bird's life. I checked both sides of my family tree, and nobody even knew what a gamecock was until I came along. Most of these breeds are referred to by their colors.
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Gamecocks are an agricultural commodity. It took the owners all of fifteen minutes to tell those gals they weren't welcome. It's part of our nation's culture. I remember one time at a facility in Louisiana, some ladies of the night did show up. A lot of breeders, their birds have been in their family for two or three or four generations. He was breeding his fowl the way everyone does today, except he was thirty or forty years ahead of his time. But Governor Dolph Briscoe formed a crime prevention task force to control, among other things, the drugs coming across the border—this was in the seventies—and I guess law enforcement got tired of chasing drug dealers, because they started shutting down our facilities, which were labeled organized crime. I'm completely outside that, because I fell in love with them as a kid for their tenacity and their looks. It's a gentleman's wager, like betting on a football game. Murphy gamefowl for sale in texas craigslist. In 1963 a judge on Oklahoma's court of criminal appeals had ruled that a chicken was not an animal, so harvesting was alive and well across the state line. As for gambling, what goes on at harvesting facilities is no different from what you see at a golf course, the rodeo circuit, or a bass tournament. It was more or less a hobby for years. Jones, who lives in Gatesville, has been raising game chickens for almost fifty years.
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Well, the gaff originated in England; it came over on the Mayflower. The governors of Texas and Oklahoma bet on the Red River Shootout every year, and there's no discussion about that. He was a mentor of mine. Then, in 2002, voters in Oklahoma banned cockfighting in their state too. It's a 365-day-a-year job: overseeing what kind of feed your birds get, their water, their nutrients and vitamins.
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When a rooster has had enough, he's had enough, and he's counted out just like a boxer is. John Goodwin, of the Humane Society of the United States, testified in favor of the bill. I mean, think of how many foals Secretariat sired. Ultimately what makes a good bird great is the way you care for it.
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If he found a bird with particularly desirable characteristics, he'd take him out of fighting and focus on breeding him. Soon the birds became my sole source of income. There used to be a few small harvesting facilities around Texas that I'd visit in my early twenties.