Against the bays of a lusty crowd gathered inside a barn deep in the pocket of Alabama, a handler scooped a flailing gamecock, popped the bird’s beak into his mouth, and inhaled deeply, sucking hard to free a plug of jellied blood and mucus. CPR success. The handler spat an arc of wadded coagulation onto red dirt, and the bird was reborn hard, ready for combat. As feathers flew, family vendors hawked t-shirts, tumblers, tacos, and weaponry. On with the cockfight. On with the dynasty.
The rise and fall of the Easterling cock clan, among America’s premier outfits of underground bloodsport and gamecock breeding, is an American tale of grit versus government, and hard work versus hubris. Steered by patriarch Big Jim, the multigenerational Easterlings, according to the feds, were a mix of in-laws and outlaws.
The family built a rooster mecca along the backroads of central Alabama, featuring “Poor Man’s Club,” anchored to a custom cock barn venue with stadium seating surrounding two pits, concessions, merchandising, and a steady stream of derbies openly advertised and promoted on social media.
However, the clock struck midnight when undercover USDA agents infiltrated the pit in 2021, busting seven members of the Easterlings for a total of five and a half years of prison; two years of home detention; and four years of probation.
Welcome to the southern fried, wild ride of Alabama’s cockfighting Corleones.
Beautiful Bloodlines
“It’s no secret that Big Jim has the biggest Mexican derby in the fu***** country and every time the doors open, there’s 300-320 Mexicans down here…”—Brent Easterling
Roughly 60 miles south of Birmingham, in the rural hills of Chilton County, outside Verbena, William “Big Jim” Easterling, 77, shepherded a profitable cockfighting venture along County Road 528, centered on agricultural land, dirt roads, family homes, trailers, outbuildings, and abundant housing for roughly 4,000 birds. Surrounded by hills, trees, and backroad doglegs, it was not a property to roll into by accident.
Under Big Jim’s umbrella, two entities functioned via a tangle of relatives born and raised in cockfighting. One, L&L Gamefarm, helmed by Big Jim’s son, Brent Easterling, 38, alongside his wife, Kassi, 39; two, Swift Creek Gamefarm, run by Big Jim’s grandson, Tyler Easterling, 30, in tandem with his father, Billy Easterling, 56 (another of Big Jim’s sons), and his brother-in-law, Junior Williams, 34. Amber Easterling, 25, one of Big Jim’s granddaughters, also pulled on the cockfighting rope.
Both Swift Creek and L&L produced remarkably beautiful bloodlines, champions in the cockfighting industry, and birds fueled by testosterone aplenty. The Easterlings were masters of the art.
At the figurative center of their operation stood a metal barn, by initial appearance no different than any farm building housing livestock or agriculture machinery. However, the Easterlings’ barn was no farm structure. It was built for the sole purpose of cockfighting at roughly 80’ x 60’, with a dirt floor, dual fight pits, and stadium seating for 150 spectators. By way of razor battles to the death, the Easterlings filled the barn with bodies and packed primal pits with avian combat.
The fights, aka derbies, were held in plain sight, openly advertised by group texts, social media, print publications, and flyers. The family did not hide who they were. As Tyler declared on Facebook:
To Swift Creek Followers: There has been some talk on social media about Other Farms having the same Fowl as Swift Creek! I assure you this is incorrect! These Fowl have been carefully selected over many years. Our Fowl speak for themselves! Ask anyone WHO CLAIMS to have the same Fowl, to PRODUCE THE DOCUMENTED FIGHT RECORDS that SWIFTCREEK HAS!!! Go ahead I’ll wait!! This is not a post to brag, this post is to help people know the facts about where they get their chickens! Swift Creek Fowl is only sold by Billy, Bobby, or Tyler Easterling!!Thank you very much for being followers of Swift Creek!!!!
The Easterlings, to their credit, knew they had a supreme product and a barn steadily jammed with passionate patrons. What they didn’t know? Bulldog federal agents were sitting in the crowd.
All Bans Ain’t Equal
Cockfighting is as old as time. Tracing back at least to the Greeks and Persians, cockfighting tracks throughout history, surfacing in the early 1700s in colonial America. George Washington’s journal entries contain a cockfight attendance in 1751, when he was 19. Just under a century later, Andrew Jackson bred, fought, and bet on gamecocks. Whether gentleman or commoner, cockfighting is part and parcel of rural U.S. lore, particularly in the South.
All 50 states have cockfighting bans on the books. Massachusetts was first in 1836, and Louisiana was last in 2007, with Alabama’s ban toward the middle, in 1896. However, all bans ain’t equal, and Alabama’s cockfighting prohibition remains among the weakest in the nation, classified as a misdemeanor with a maximum $50 fine and no time behind bars. By culture and attitude, cockfighting is not a crime of consequence in many counties across the South and Southwest. Local law enforcement, with plenty of thieves and meth-heads to wrangle, often turns a blind eye to cockfighting. Wink. Nod.
(Arguably, Alabama is the cockfighting capital of the Southeast. State breeders sell birds to the Philippines, Mexico, Vietnam, and several other countries where cockfighting is a massive spectator and gambling sport. The Philippines annually hosts the World Slasher Cup, maintained since 1963.)
To outsiders, cockfighting is redneck Rome, defined by animal cruelty. To insiders, cockfighting is tradition, livelihood, lifestyle, and an exercise of God-given rights, and vastly less barbarous than a slaughterhouse or meatpacking plant.
Regardless of moral lens, cockfighting has been federally outlawed and policed by USDA since 1976 and the Animal Welfare Act. The prohibition was strengthened in 2007, making it a felony to buy, sell, transport, deliver, or possess birds and fighting implements across state or foreign lines, backed by max prison terms of three years per violation and up to $250,000 in fines. Further, in 2014, even attending a cockfight was made punishable by up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.
In the underworld gray between federal and state law, the Easterlings operated with remarkable success. Their bloodlines thrived. They walked it like they talked it. And they put on a helluva show.
Powder Puff Derby
In the late 2010s, while investigating a cockfighting ring in Kentucky, USDA agents heard word of bigger fish almost 320 miles due south in Alabama. A cursory look on social media confirmed the cockfighting tipoffs—the Easterlings were loud and proud about their cock pedigree.
Brent, Kassi, Tyler and Billy bred, sold, shipped, and promoted gamecocks. Big Jim, Brent, and Tyler did the fighting. Kassi and Billy did the selling of weaponry and paraphernalia. Junior ran security and collected gate fees. Amber worked a merchandise table.
Fight season typically lasted from November to early July, dictated by the biology of molting. In November 2019, for example, Brent distributed the 2019-2020 schedule for Poor Man’s Club. According to a subsequent indictment, he listed 17 fights, detailing “implements, number of cocks, entry fees, and betting options and cockhouse rentals.” The fights frequently carried themes and unique titles: Blondie Rolland Memorial, Triple Crown Derby, Hawaiian Derby, Ray Alexander Tribute, Powder Puff Derby, and Ricky Dixon Memorial.
By 2021, the white metal barn was a smash hit. On derby day, typically starting around noon and lasting until early evening, attendees paid $30 per ticket at a gated road entrance and parked on grass beside the barn. The crowd was a mixture of whites and Hispanics, often with wives and children in tow.
Most entered the barn via three doors on the building’s south side. The left door led to stadium seating around the main cockfighting pit. The center door accessed a scale room. The right door opened to indoor cockhouses and more stadium seating. Another door, positioned on the west side, connected to a kitchen.
Cock weapons and accessories, along with self-branded t-shirts and tumblers, were sold, often by Amber, at a small shed located outside the main barn, complete with merchandise spread on a table, flanked by a cash register.
Inside the barn, two main pits drew center attention, both approximately 20' by 20'. They were skirted by secondary, smaller drag pits. Visible to all, a giant, dry-erase whiteboard recorded wins and losses. The kitchen, helmed by several Hispanic ladies, sat a short jump from the action.
Participants paid $500 for a five-rooster entry (most birds between 4-5 lb.), with 30 entries in the normal range of expectation. The money funneled to a winner’s pot. Everything in the derby was kept in tight order: banded roosters, weight classes, rounds, clock, rules, bets, referees, scorekeepers.
The birds, lively and ready to rumble, were equipped with weaponry usually tied to their left legs. Some cocks were strapped with a gaff—essentially a curved icepick stretching up to 2.75” long designed to deliver puncture wounds. Others wore razor-sharp knives approximately 1.25” long intended to inflict lacerations.
Fighting implements were secured to the legs with waxed twine, sometimes bolstered with moleskin, all made easier by trimming the natural spurs to a quarter-inch or half-inch in length. Additionally, combs, waddles, and earlobes were sheared off, due to their vascularity. Less flesh, less vulnerability, and less blood.
Time to pit’em.
Little David vs. Sandspur
Forget UFC. The organized chaos in and around a pit arguably tops a cage-match spectacle. As handlers approach a pit with birds, the crowd stands and begins hollering out bets.
Feathers fly and flesh absorbs steel, as handlers massage birds, clean airways, and blow on back hackles in between rounds. Anything to keep a rooster at the ready.
Whether featuring punctured lungs or severed spinal cords, fights usually last several rounds and end when a bird dies, fails to show aggression, or a handler concedes.
The action was masterfully captured in Cockfighter, Charles Willeford’s benchmark 1962 novel, as he detailed a match between two gamecocks, Little David vs. Sandspur:
I shrugged indifferently and sat down on the edge of the pit to arm my cock. I opened my gaff case, removed a bottle of typewriter cleaning solvent and cleaned Sandspur’s spur stumps. Most cockers use plain alcohol to clean spurs, but typewriter solvent is fast-drying and, in my opinion, removes the dirt easier. After fitting tight chamois-skin coverings over both spurs, I slipped the metal sockets of the short heels over the covered stumps and tied them with waxed string, setting them low and a trifle to the outside. The points of the tapered heels were as sharp as needles and a man has to be careful when he arms a cock. I had a puckered puncture scar on my right forearm caused by a moment of carelessness seven years before, and I didn’t want another one.
The betting had already started, but the crowd quieted down when Mr. Middleton stepped into the pit.
“This is an extra hack, gentlemen,” he said loudly. “Little David versus Sandspur. Southern Conference rules will prevail. No time limit, and short gaffs.”
We cradled our fighters over our left arms, holding their feet, and stood sideways on our center scores, two feet apart, so the cocks could peck at each other. These cocks had never seen each other before, but they were mortal enemies … The cocks were exactly eight feet apart.
“Pit!” Mr. Middleton announced, and before the word was out of his mouth Sandspur was in the air and halfway to Little David. The cocks met in midair, both of them shuffling with blurred yellow feet, and then they dropped to the ground. Neither cock had managed to get above the other.
As he dropped back, Sandspur rose with a short flight and savagely hooked the gaff of his right leg into Little David’s wing. The point of the heel was banged solidly into the bone and Sandspur couldn’t get it dislodged. He pecked savagely at Little David’s head, and hit the top of the downed cock’s dubbed head hard with his bill open . . . too hard.
The upper section of Sandspur’s bill broke off cleanly at the doctored crack I had made. A bubble of blood formed, and Sandspur stopped pecking. Both cocks struggled to break away from each other, but the right spur was still stuck, and all Sandspur could do was hop up and down in place on his free leg. I looked at Mr. Middleton.
“Handle!” the judge shouted. “Thirty seconds!”
A moment later I disentangled the gaff from Little David’s wing and retreated to my starting line. I put Sandspur’s head in my mouth and sucked the blood from his broken beak. I licked the feathers of his head back into place and spat as much saliva as I could into his open mouth. For the remaining seconds I had left I sucked life into his clipped comb. The comb was much too pale.
“Get ready!” I held Sandspur by the tail on the line. “Pit your cocks!”
Instead of flying into the air, Sandspur circled for the right wall. Little David turned in midair, landed running, and chased my cock into the far corner. Sandspur turned to fight, and the cocks met head on, but my injured bird was forced back by the fierceness of Little David’s rush.
On his back, Sandspur hit his opponent twice in the chest, drawing blood both times, and then Little David was above him in the air and cutting at his head with both spurs. A sharp gaff entered Sandspur’s right eye, and he died as the needle point pierced his central nervous system. Little David strutted back and forth, pecked twice at my lifeless cock, and then crowed his victory.
As for Poor Man’s Club, business and breeding boomed. But USDA-OIG agents were closing fast. The Easterlings didn’t realize their ship was taking on water.
I’m Going To Protect What’s Mine
USDA agents, posing as cockfighters, went to L&L Garmefarm, observed a sparring session, and bought several game fowl from Brent. Later, on two occasions, undercover agents attended derby fights in the metal barn. However, during the second occasion, Big Jim smelled a ruse: He confronted the USDA personnel, incorrectly assuming they were animal rights activists.
According to court documents: “On or about February 20, 2021, W.C. (Big Jim) Easterling drove around the Easterling Family Pit property in an off-road vehicle, pulled up to two undercover agents, questioned who they were, stated ‘I’m going to protect what’s mine,’ and demanded to know whether the undercover agents had any recording devices.”
Cover blown and nerves rattled, the agents walked back to the pit, then proceeded to their vehicle—and got outta Dodge. The investigation continued, connecting a chain of communications related to cock conspiracy.
Social media review, cell phone records, text communications, and direct observation produced a lock-tight case. When the federal hammer dropped, 150 USDA and DOJ officers descended on County Road 528 with warrants, assigned to search different homes and buildings.
The subsequent indictment was damning, compiling evidence of illegal cockfighting, breeding for fighting, and conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling outfit from 2018 to 2021.
A sampling of the Easterlings’ activity listed across 100 charges in the indictment:
February 12, 2019 Brent and Kassi sold a stag and a pullet for $1,300.
March 3, 2019, Brent and Kassi sold a trio of fighting birds that included at least one rooster for $1,000.
September 1, 2019, Brent and Kassi sold a stag and two pullets for $1,650.
February 26, 2020, Brent, via Facebook, messaged a potential customer, asking if he liked “gutterman knives” and wrote, “Kassi just bought some, to put in her store.”
February 26, 2020, Brent sends potential customer a Facebook audio message, talking about popularity of the Easterling Pit…. “it’s no secret that Big Jim has the biggest Mexican derby in the f****** country and every time the doors open, there’s 300-320 Mexicans down here…” Brent added that Kassi has “Don Miguel boots, Bugarin boots, Zuri knives, and Guterman knives” to sell.
June 24, 2020, an unindicted co-conspirator in Mexico shipped 120 cockfighting knives to Kassi and Brent via FedEx. The packages were intercepted by U.S. customs.
September 2, 2020, Brent sold a trio of birds (rooster and two hens) to an undercover agent for $1,500 after a sparring demo in the agent’s presence. On the same day, he sold 12 knives and a sheath to an agent for $200.
September 21, Brent and Kassi received a $1,700 bank deposit via Western Union from an agent for a trio of fighting birds.
October 1, Brent used USPS to ship a trio of cocks to an undercover agent in South Carolina who made the purchase via Western Union.
January 23, 2021, “During the derby, when asked for a copy of the fight schedule, W.C. (Big Jim) Easterling pulled up an image of a handwritten cockfighting schedule for the Easterling Family Pit on his mobile telephone, handed his telephone to an undercover agent, and told the agent to text himself the schedule, and instructed the agent not to give the schedule to everyone he sees.”
The case was investigated by USDA-OIG and Homeland Security Investigations, with assistance from U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. Facing the inevitable for violations of the Animal Welfare Act on an “exceptional scale,” the Easterling seven copped a plea. Guilty.
Adios, Poor Man’s Club?
In November 2022, Big Jim, 77, was sentenced to two years of home detention. Due to Big Jim’s declining health, the judge decided prison would be “extremely detrimental.” Big Jim was also fined $8,000 and forced to destroy his cockfighting barn and the associated infrastructure.
Brent was sentenced to 24 months in prison followed by one year of supervised release. Tyler got 20 months in prison followed by one year of supervised release. Billy received 22 months in prison and one year of supervised release.
Kassi was sentenced to two years of probation, including half a year of home detention. Amber got one year of probation. Likewise, Junior was tagged with one year of probation.
Meanwhile, in all 50 states, somewhere and someplace, illegal derbies rage on. The fights occur on the back 40 of farms, or behind a warehouse, or in an auto garage, often conducted in portable pits. No state is immune to the primal pull of cockfights. However, few outfits in history match the audacity and rural reach of Alabama’s Easterling cock dynasty. Poor Man’s Club still echoes.
For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer
Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust
Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing
When Conservation Backfires: Landowner Defeats Feds in Mindboggling Private Property Case
