pointing it out to you!!! Battle Royale
We preach game to the core. We teach our friends and fellow cockers that there is no more important quality to these creatures than gameness. Forget cut, forget aggression, forget speed; it’s all about the game. Every so often back in the day at Little Sunset Game Club, we would host a Battle Royale if the regular derby ended early enough in the evening. The first time we had one... and since I had personally never witnessed such an event, I was very curious.
As a child I never had much interaction with the avian species outside of my grandmothers parakeet. I married Richard in 1982 and thus began my formal education. As we dated, my husband often remarked on his experiences in the Philippines and his father, an Orinthologist that had worked at Salisbury Labs, that was in fact larger than life. I guess I overlooked or ignored with my newfound love interest the role this would play in our lives. He was just a young man, a biologist, fresh out of the navy, very intelligent and we fell in love.
Richard’s father was “Dr. Blues” and while in the Philippines my husband found his love of the Filipino Style of fighting. His father and he wrote back and forth many long letters about the sport, the rules, the conditioning, and the birds being used. This was a new style of fighting that had not yet been introduced to the USA. My husband was also a former Golden Gloves Champion Boxer, and he knew that proper training was paramount in any physical competition. He actually attended the first derby in which an American entered and won the International Derby in Manilla, not as a participant but as an observer.
In the end, because they recognized that better nutrition and solid conditioning could be a determining factor in this sport, he had his daddy send care packages of vitamins, and supplements. Warehouse Vet Supply was formed to offset the costs of these shipments and provide a bit of a living after Richard got out of the Navy. Richard worked in the oilfield as a way to further support the early days of this business. We moved to Cook Springs to his part of the partnership in 1986. Warehouse Vet Supply is now a name lost in time, only kept alive by a small number of products that Bobby and Richard formulated together in the early days.
I held my first gamecock after our move to Alabama. I listened to Bobby and Richard as they discussed derbies and conditioning. I took on the role of breeding and found out I was pretty decent at keeping the little buggers alive and healthy to reach the age they could compete. I watched these birds; I learned their habits…everything about these birds fascinated me. Warehouse Vet Supply grew into a mega-market over the years. As I was raising our kids and it was a time when few women were in the pits, this was my role. I worked the phones, picked up mail and fed the roosters while they were away.
Bobby was a gruff taskmaster; Richard was a brilliant scientist. It was a match made in heaven until it wasn’t. Over time we found a divide in our ideas over how to proceed, we split the business equally, thus forming F B McGuinness and Breco. During the time I worked at Warehouse Vet Supply, I was able to get my degree in Poultry Science, I am forever grateful to Bobby for encouraging me in that journey.
As we branched out on our own and moved first to Augusta, Ga and later to Slidell, La, we found that we still needed to supplement our finances as our new business grew, so Richard returned to the oilfields while I worked F B McGuinness. Since he was gone so much of the time, I found that I took on the lion’s share of what F B McGuinness was trying to achieve. We bought a small farm on the Louisianna/Mississippi border and set up camp.
I would go to “Birds of a Feather” and watch the derbies on Saturdays. I learned more and more as time went on about this sport and we started our gamefarm. We realized rather quickly that the breeds we had were never going to be world class roosters and sold that enterprise to finance our newest venture, the purchase of the Buckwheat Farms, a 20-acre farm in the heart of Cajun Country. Located in Sunset, La this was already a mecca for roostermen as we were 1 1/2 miles from the World Famous Sunset Recreation Club. We also purchased the Little Sunset Gameclub.
Now to return to where I started with this post. I learned rather quickly that “The Battle Royale” is not about the rooster that has the most speed, it’s not about the one that is most aggressive. It has little to actually do with gameness. It is about being patient. It is about staying out of the way while the other birds kill each other off, it about preserving your strength. Its about cutting your opponents as they come at you one after the other. It factors in the agility to get out of the way and requires having eyes in the back of your head, it’s about playing it smart, and over all that, it’s about having a little bit of luck…well maybe a whole lot of luck. I am not a big fan of a Battle Royale, but I am smart enough to realize that I actually won such an event in this “Battle Royale” called life.
Keep ‘em crowing…
