Nation’s Leading Cockfighting Advocates Unmasked by Our Undercover Investigations

We knew all along that the two self-appointed national leaders of the effort to weaken our nation’s animal fighting laws, despite their repeated public denials, were knee-deep in the underworld of cockfighting.

For the past two weekends, our undercover investigators penetrated a cockfighting pit in McIntosh County, Okla., where they recorded footage of staged animal fighting.

We never had a shred of doubt that Anthony Devore and Blake Pearce, who hails from a multi-generation cockfighting family, were hardened cockfighting criminals who show contempt for the rule of law.

But for several years, they’ve been engaged in a charade with state and federal lawmakers, casting themselves as “chicken farmers” and “gamefowl enthusiasts” and even “criminal justice reform advocates.”

The two created the United States Gamefowl Commission and the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission to advance their efforts to battle the FIGHT Act and to weaken state laws against animal fighting across the country. They traveled to visit other cockfighters from Hawaii to Georgia to set up similar front groups and urged them to donate to politicians and persuade them to gut our nation’s anti-cruelty laws.

Back in their home state, they donated money to Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt and got him to do a video embracing their work at the state capitol in Oklahoma City. After we released an exposé, Stitt quickly disavowed knowledge of the groups’ involvement in cockfighting.

Devore and Pearce raised at least $100,000 from other cockfighters and donated tens of thousands to politicians, mainly to state lawmakers in Oklahoma, including the governor.

They got involved in elections and campaigned for lawmakers who’d do their bidding to weaken Oklahoma’s voter-approved anti-cockfighting law passed in 2002.

We handily turned back their legislative initiatives for each of the past three years in Oklahoma. And we reminded lawmakers, including those they donated to, that they are not “criminal justice reform advocates.” They’re just plain cockfighting criminals.

Our Undercover Investigation Exposes Their Cockfighting Crimes.

We were not even looking for Devore and Pearce when our investigators surreptitiously and bravely stepped inside a makeshift illegal cockfighting arena in rural eastern Oklahoma the past two weekends. Our team was there to document and stop felony-level crimes by alerting tribal law enforcement and the McIntosh County Sheriff about the clandestine, staged animal fights.

The investigators got inside the cockfighting setup (see the footage of the fighting here) and lo and behold, there was Blake Pearce just outside the pit and intensely watching the fight as two birds with knives attached to their legs slashed each other.

The next weekend, Anthony Devore was spotted in the front row of the makeshift bleachers too. At times, he was in the pit or at the edge of it, helping a woman to pit one of the birds for an upcoming fight.

These two large-scale cockfighting events — one on May 31 and the second on June 7  — occurred on Cherokee tribal land, with each drawing more than 100 entrants and spectators.

In prior months, investigators from Animal Wellness Action and Showing Animals Respect and Kindness also documented their family cockfighting complexes in nearby counties.

A couple of years ago, one of their associates — Chance Campo, a district director for the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission, which Devore and Pearce founded — was arrested for illegal cockfighting by the Carter County Sheriff.

In August 2023, the state’s largest newspaper asked Devore about his district director’s arrest. “The Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission does not promote, condone nor participate in any illegal activities,” Devore said in a statement to the Oklahoman. “Mr. Campo’s personal actions do not represent or reflect the purpose, direction or values of the commission. Mr. Campo has resigned his position as a district director with the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission.”

I wonder if Devore and Pearce will resign now that they’ve been caught red-handed at a cockfighting derby, violating tribal, state, and federal prohibitions on attending a cockfight, possessing fighting animals, and staging fights?

We’ve been alert to their deceptions and criminal activity from the get-go, but now we possess incontrovertible video evidence to expose their involvement in political efforts to protect their own organized crime rackets. Federal and state authorities have ample evidence from us to put out warrants for their arrest. We’ve also documented Devore’s illegal sales of cockfighting weapons.

Earlier this year, Pearce was the sole witness at a legislative hearing in Little Rock, Ark., to advocate for a bill that would have gutted the state’s anti-cockfighting law, again denying any involvement in cockfighting. He told lawmakers that he sells birds to more than 25 countries but claims no knowledge of what the people do with his specially raised fighting roosters. That’s like a cocaine grower and manufacturer taking thousands of dollars for the sale of the stash but then claiming he’s not responsible for what’s done with the contraband.

And that’s precisely why we’ve worked to make it a federal crime to sell or transport birds for fighting purposes.

‘“We represent game fowl farmers who breed and raise game fowl, but not for fighting purposes,” said Devore, himself a game fowl breeder.” — NBC News March 14, 2024, “Oklahoma’s Push to Weaken Penalties for Cockfighting Frustrates Opponents of the Bloodsport”

It’s because of the contempt for the law exhibited by Devore and Pearce and thousands and thousands of other animal fighters that we are working to pass the FIGHT Act in Congress to strengthen our national laws against staged animal fighting. And we’ve worked to introduce the Animal Cruelty Enforcement Act and the FBI Animal Cruelty Taskforce (FBI ACT) Act to enhance the capacity of our federal government to do the police work and the prosecutions required to stamp out this activity.

With SHARK, we’ve exposed hundreds of cockfighting traffickers and found dozens and dozens of illegal pits. We’ve traced the transport of birds from these U.S.-based cockfighters to cartels and other crime syndicates from Mexico to the Philippines.

As you can tell, we are taking a comprehensive approach to rooting out this cruelty.

Please donate to support our anti-animal fighting work so that we can put investigators in the field, fortify our state and federal laws against animal cruelty, and fend off deceptive efforts to weaken those laws.

No one else in the nation is doing this kind of work to root out animal fighting in the dark corners where it festers.

Please support the extraordinary investigators who risk it all to stop the treachery and cruelty of men who stage animal fights for the thrill of bloodletting and then raise money to influence politicians to weaken the law or look the other way when crimes are in progress