Dallas Is A Hotbed For Cockfighting. Animal Rights Activists Are Ready For The Ring

Before 2023, roosters didn’t crow much in Dallas. Ordinances banned fowl ownership within city limits, but nowadays, Dallasites across the city rise with the sun and the birds that greet it with their shrill song. It’s easy to ignore the cry. They’re just chickens. But when the neighbors have a flock large enough to feed a small nation, when droves of shady figures arrive at night, it may not be a case of bird enthusiasts saving some money on eggs, but a cockfighting ring. Dallas is a hotbed for them. 

Cockfighting busts are far from rare in North Texas, and cracking down on the parties involved has been a large-scale effort from animal rights groups, law enforcement agencies and legislators. Still, cockfighting remains a problem, but activists say they’re witnessing a slow shift and plan on applying more pressure until cockfighting penalties are increased and support for the bloodsport is fully drained. 

“[Cockfighters] are now confronting a legal landscape that I’ve worked to build with colleagues over the last 30 years, where cockfighting is a federal felony,” said Wayne Pacelle, CEO of Animal Wellness Action. “It’s a federal felony to possess animals for fighting. It’s a misdemeanor to attend a cockfight. It’s a felony to ship them or transport them anywhere. It’s a felony to ship and make the fighting implements that they attach to the animal’s legs. Oklahoma has a great state law; Texas needs to be improved.” 

Pacelle’s organization released a report detailing its findings after five years of underground investigations into what it calls “the Texoma Cockfighting Corridor.” The corridor runs between Tulsa and Dallas and is “a hub for illegal cockfighting operators.” 

Cockfighting is illegal in both Texas and Oklahoma, a change that occurred within the last 25 years. But indeed, attending a cockfight in Texas is still only a misdemeanor, and recent efforts to change that, led by Dallas Rep. Rafael Anchia, made little progress in the Legislature. The bill was never scheduled for a House reading, effectively leaving it dead in the water. But Pacelle says he’s not swayed by the bill’s failure, and that animal rights movements are slow-moving and require significant efforts. 

“Why are we tolerating this? Why isn’t anybody doing anything about this? Like a lot of other animal issues, it took us hammering away in order to gain awareness of the problem,” he said. “For years, it was like we were applying the heat, but the water wasn’t boiling.” 

Fight in Texas Stalls, But It’s Not Over

While Anchia’s bill didn’t go as far as he had hoped, another bill is moving at the federal level, and it has the support of one of the most powerful Texans, Sen. John Cornyn. 

The Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking (FIGHT) Act of 2025 would strengthen various existing animal fighting laws. Cornyn and nine other senators, six of whom are Democrats, co-sponsored the bill, a testament to the issue’s bipartisanship. 

The most significant change would be prohibiting the shipment of mature roosters, chickens older than six months, through the United States Postal Service. Similar laws that ban the shipment of dogs across state lines already exist to prevent the spread of dogfighting. But Pacelle says this new change would hit the Dallas cockfighters especially hard. 

Through their investigations, the Animal Wellness Action unveiled an American gamefowl breeding company based in Celina that ships dozens of birds from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport through Korea Air to the Philippines, where cockfighting is legal, popular and codified by the national government.

“We’ve uncovered this Texas livestock shipping company just north of Dallas… We are definitely going to address that issue in a very proactive way,” he said. “But I think the key is that when we learn of operations that have fighting birds and when we learn about fighting pits, law enforcement comes down on these people like a ton of bricks.” 

Shipping birds specifically for fighting is a felony, but shipping birds for something like breeding is completely legal, and without the spurs or gaffs tied to the ankles of chickens, it’s pretty easy to say you’re boxing them up for a luxury vacation in Manila. And if you wanted to, you could send the gaffs, even though it is illegal to ship them for the intention of fighting, in a separate shipment, call them “antiques,” and no one could stop you. Legal loopholes like these allow for cockfighting to persist, but proponents still claim cockfighting is an integral part of their American family history.

“I’m a fourth-generation gamefowl farmer, and when I grew up, everything was legal,” said the president of the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission, Anthony Devore. “To be able to say, I’m gonna take your heritage away from you because I don’t like you or I don’t like what you stand for, that’s my heritage and I’m not breaking the law.”

The Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission was a PAC that endorsed a small group of Oklahoma politicians that opposed strengthening existing cockfighting laws. In September, the commission was fined $10,000 for violating campaign donation rules and ordered to dissolve after DeVore was caiight redhanded at a cockfight.

With the loudest proponent of cockfighting taken down a notch, Pacelle is looking forward to further bi-partisan legislative actions.

“We’ll be sure to help in the state Capitol in Austin when the next session gets going, but in the interim, we’re really focused on passing the FIGHT Act,” said Pacelle.  “Sen. Cornyn has co-sponsored, and I’m hoping that Senator Cruz will. Once you have people like Cruz and Cornyn..  it sends a signal to the state lawmakers, ‘Oh, that’s the right position for conservative Republicans to be on it.”

About More Than Just Chickens

Cockfighting, on its face, is morally reprehensible, but it also moves in tandem with other serious crimes. The rings that have been tarred and feathered with the blood and guts of steroid-pumped chickens are also the scene of underground gambling, drug trafficking and other organized crimes. Pacelle says this is what is creating a shift in the perspective of lawmakers and law enforcers, and it’s the reason Anchia initially filed his bill. 

“It’s the unlawful organized crime activity that we’re really targeting,” Anchia said in January before the bill failed. 

Pacelle says Cornyn is a big win for the FIGHT Act, but the biggest win for anti-cockfighting legislation is an endorsement from the Sheriff’s Association of Texas. 

“It’s now becoming understood within the law enforcement community that cockfighting comes with a crime wave,” he said. “The first wave is the is the animal cruelty crime, but all the other waves come in; the narcotics, the illegal gambling, the money laundering, the violence. It’s all commingled. You do not have upstanding citizens who are engaged in cockfighting.”

Pacelle is eager to see more Texans join the fight against cockfighting because, he says, the Lone Star State might be able to help bring an end to the bloodsport. 

“Texas is a crucial player in our efforts to eliminate cockfighting across the nation and the world because U.S. cockfighters are the breeding ground for cockfighters throughout the world,” he said. “We’ve got to have strong laws in Texas. It’s imperative and we have to have enforcement. It’s going to all start to unravel for these people if we’re able to succeed here.”