Method Of F. E. Grist - Feeding And Heeling For The Cockfighting Pit

By F. E. Grist

A republication of a rare early book on cockfighting packed with information on all aspects of the sport.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473384323

Book preview

VALUABLE POINTS

Preface

Years ago I was urged to make public my rules for feeding. I assured my friends that I had no secret method; that what I did, I did in public in the way of feeding, viz.: Plenty of feed and proper exercise is all there is in it.

The public, and especially those who had no experience, had heard of secret preparations by which a cock, so fed, would not bleed when cut. Some had seen men who professed great skill; who carried with them secret charms, such as little bags of herbs, powder, etc., that would put to blush the most accomplished voodoo medicine man. These secrets, it was understood, had been handed down from generation to generation, and the successful cocker was always pointed out as having exclusive control of the magic recipe. Sometimes this superstition assumed a disagreeable shape. I remember on one occasion that a party was offered a cock to eat that I had fortunately killed on the first fly. If the reader could have seen the expression on that man’s face, he would not have doubted his sincerity when he declared that the dead cock had been conjured.

With the foreknowledge that a great many will be disappointed at my inability to exhume any of the hidden mysteries or lost arts, show any new discoveries or revelations of any triumph of science, and that the key to alectromachy is not in my possession, it will not be wondered at that I have hesitated, and that in my procrastination years have glided by. I now find myself unable to longer put off the appeals of my friends, who write me to publish when I do and they will pay my price.

In this method of following as near as possible the actual habit of the cock, I see that recently those pugilists who have been most successful adopt the same course in their training. All medicine and herbs are now discarded.

I have tried to make my directions plain. I have always had to condition a large number of cocks. I know of no cocker in this country who ever handled more than fifty or seventy-five cocks, while I seldom ever handle less than one hundred and fifty at once. In my annual fighting exercises I carried with me a tent forty by sixty feet, and seldom fought less than a hundred cocks, which took a week. I have carried my cocks on long journeys in wagons, camping at night. Have also carried them by boat and by rail. This method has never failed me.

No man has ever defeated me in the majority of fights. I have fought for as much cash as I have ever heard of being staked in America. I have never lost any large sum on any one fight. I have frequently won more than one thousand dollars on the result of a single fight. I only mention this to show that this method has been successful, and not in a spirit of boastfulness.

With kind regard, and trusting that you may meet with the same success that has always attended me, I remain,

Very respectfully,

F. E. GRIST.

Pitting

This is far more important than many think, and a man who will lose his head during the excitement of a fight can never make a first class pitter. A first-class pitter must be a man who not only watches every movement of his own cock, but that of his opponent, and he must possess an eye that can calculate with certainty the damage his own cock has received, or inflicted, so as to be ready to take advantage of any rule that will allow him to force the fight if desired. It sometimes occurs that both cocks are so wearied that neither appears able to do the other damage, and the pitters are themselves reluctant to handle. A chance blow may make it so that if the pitter can have the opportunity of handling and bracing up his tired cock, which had, by chance, got in his work, but is so wearied that if not handled he would probably exhaust himself in a fruitless effort to do further injury to his opponent; if not recovering sufficiently to himself win, may force a draw. A pitter, of course, can only handle under rules governing the fight,