“No more chicken $#@+” Ethics Commisson tells Anthony Devore
OKLAHOMA CITY , Oklahoma—Even the Oklahoma state capitol, where the hot air comes sweeping down the halls, has limits to how much wind it will tolerate from Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission cofounder Anthony Devore.
Actually “commissioned” by nobody, and never any sort of official Oklahoma state-sanctioned entity, the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission “will pay $10,000 and dissolve following a settlement with the [state] Ethics Commission for violating state rules governing contributions,” reported Emma Murphy for Oklahoma Voice on September 17, 2025.
And that is not all.
“Devore was finally arrested for participating in the cockfight in McIntosh County in June,” as reported by ANIMALS 24-7 on June 8, 2024, Animal Wellness Action investigator Kevin Chambers said.
Busted!
Chambers forwarded documentation that Anthony Wayne Headrick Devore was indeed on September 8, 2025 charged with misdemeanor attendance at a cockfight on the Cherokee Nation.
The evidence included video obtained by undercover and drone investigators for both Animal Wellness Action and Showing Animals Respect & Kindness.
The other Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission cofounder, Blake Pearce, was also documentedly present at the McIntosh County cockfight, Chambers told ANIMALS 24-7.
(See Anthony Devore: “Shocked, shocked” to find cockfighting at a cockfight?)
Devore has long maintained that he is not himself a cockfighter, is not trying to legalize cockfighting, and is only trying to mitigate penalties for gamefowl breeders who export their birds to nations where cockfighting is legal, as well as for students who raise gamefowl as part of educational projects.
(Animal Wellness Action photo)
Admitted multiple violations of law
“The Gamefowl Commission will pay the full amount [of $10,000] in monthly payments beginning October 1, 2025 and ending by September 1, 2027,” Murphy of Oklahoma Voice wrote.
“The committee must dissolve within 30 days and cannot form a new affiliated political action committee for two years,” Murphy added.
“As part of the settlement,” Murphy detailed, “the political action committee admitted to accepting anonymous contributions above the legal limit, failing to collect the required contact information of contributors, spending funds outside the committee’s purpose, accepting prohibited corporate contributions, and failing to maintain accurate records.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Blatant breeches of the law”
Said Oklahoma Ethics Commission executive director Lee Anne Bruce Boone, “These violations were not mere oversights — they were blatant breaches of the law that undermine public trust in the fairness of Oklahoma’s elections.”
Bruce Boone stipulated that the settlement with the Oklahoma Game Commission “does not prevent criminal or civil charges from being filed” against the defendants by other entities.
Elaborated Andrea Hancock and Tres Savage for the Oklahoma news web site NonDoc on September 18, 2025, “The Ethics Commission required the political action committee to pay $455 on October 1, 2025 and $415 every month thereafter until September 2027, totaling $10,000 in accumulative fines.
No recent crowing
“The Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission PAC has been quiet in its political donations for quite some time, at least according to the PAC’s self-reports to the Ethics Commission,” Hancock and Savage observed.
“The PAC has not recorded making any contributions to candidate committees, political parties or other PACs since the fourth quarter of 2023, when it listed $1,750 in contributions to various candidate committees. Reported incoming funds and in-kind contributions dried up about the same time.
“The last time the PAC recorded a positive ‘funds received’ figure was the third quarter of 2023,” Hancock and Savage said. “As of its most recent filing, the PAC had a negative balance of $10,487.39, the same balance it had reported since the second quarter of 2024.
Active in 10 more states
“The PAC’s reports filed with the Ethics Commission in 2022 and 2023,” Hancock and Savage added, “show significantly more political activity, including a slate of apparent discrepancies. Beyond numerous reported donations that did not include a contributor name or address, 2022 filings listed more than $64,000 in contributions from the PAC to itself.”
Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission cofounder Anthony Devore, “working with his co-conspirator Blake Pearce, have been organizing cockfighters in 10 additional states, mounting campaigns to decriminalize cockfighting,” commented Animal Wellness Action and Center for A Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle.
Devore and Pearce have operated under a variety of institutional names, including U.S. Gamefowl Commission, always including the word “commission.”
No gains with the public
Despite buying some political favor, however, and in many places the apparent indifference of law enforcement, Devore and Pearce have made little headway with the public.
Cockfighting, said Chambers, is “one of the few bipartisan issues that Oklahomans agree on. Across Oklahoma in general, 87% of people favor keeping cockfighting as a felony. Urban, rural, men, women, it’s completely popular. People who go after cockfighters are also popular.”
An April 2023 Sooner Survey found that, “In each of the five congressional districts in Oklahoma, at least 83% of respondents want cockfighting to be illegal, and in no congressional district did support for legality exceed 12%,” affirmed NonDoc editor Michael McNutt on January 24, 2024.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Cockfighter B.L. Cozad testifies
Devore’s arguments for decriminalizing cockfighting have not even won over all Oklahoma cockfighting advocates.
Responded prominent Oklahoma cockfighter B.L. “Billy” Cozad Jr., in a December 5, 2023 Facebook posting, “Gamecock farmers with the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission are being duped by Anthony Devore to go along with undermining the constitutional argument I’ve put together that has been used in the courts that the law violates the 8th Amendment protection against cruel, unusual and excessive punishment.
“What Anthony Devore is advocating,” Cozad alleged, “is kind of like saying, ‘You’re screwing me really hard and deep and it hurts, but if you’ll use lube and only put the head in, it’ll be okay.’”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Some legislative gains
But Devore and Pearce have twice managed to sneak cockfighting decriminalization bills through the Oklahoma state house of representatives, both of which died in the state senate.
In early April 2025 Devore and Pearce nearly sneaked a cockfighting decriminalization bill through the Arkansas legislature.
The bill, HB 1611, had already cleared the Arkansas House of Representatives and was before an Arkansas state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when “Kevin Chambers, who has worked with Steve Hindi of Animal Wellness Action on so many cockfighting raids, appeared and unmasked U.S. Gamefowl Commission spokesperson Blake Pearce as an active member of a multi-generational cockfighting family,” Pacelle emailed to ANIMALS 24-7.
Solar energy business
Devore, while claiming a master’s degree in criminal justice and a doctorate in education, has according to his LinkedIn page operated an Ardmore solar energy contracting business called Texoma Solar Solutions since 2015.
“According to information in BBB files, this business is no longer in business,” responds the Better Business Bureau report on Texoma Solar Solutions.
“BBB files indicate that this business has a pattern of complaints concerning customer service and repair issues,” the report continues.
“On April 3, 2023,” the report says, “the Better Business Bureau submitted a written request to the business encouraging them to address the pattern of complaints. The BBB is awaiting a response from the business.”
Still waiting
Two and a half years later the Better Business Bureau is apparently still waiting.
The Better Business Bureau page on Texoma Solar Solutions mentions that Devore also appears to have done business as Sunset Solar & Electric Power, LLC.
The Better Business Bureau entry goes on to detail 34 separate sets of unresolved consumer complaints about Texoma Solar Solutions.
Multiple lawsuits reportedly pending against Devore in connection with his solar installation business have either never gone to trial, been dropped, or were settled out of court.
Humane World for Animals endorses California bill that would all but legalize cockfighting
But while the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission and multiple spinoffs now seem to be eclipse, both Animal Wellness Action and Humane World for Animals, formerly the Humane Society of the U.S., appear to have bought into a California cockfighting industry legalization ploy.
Alleged Humane World for Animals president Kitty Block in her blog of September 15, 2025, “AB 928, sponsored by Assembly member Chris Rogers, will dismantle large scale gamefowl trafficking networks in California by prohibiting individuals from keeping more than 25 roosters in conditions commonly associated with cockfighting operations.”
Pacelle favors more conservative version
Pacelle meanwhile told ANIMALS 24-7 that he favors a version that lowers the rooster-keeping limit to five.
But ANIMALS 24-7, from having logged the data on hundreds of cockfighting busts over more than 40 years, is aware that probably 99% of cockfighting operations keep fewer than 25 roosters at a time, and probably half or more of all cockfighters keep no more than five.
Thus California AB 928 would in effect legalize cockfighting, by setting the threshold for humane enforcement against cock breeders at a level that exempts all but the very biggest.
ANIMALS 24-7 asked Kitty Block “Why, based on what factual analysis, Humane World for Animals imagines it would do anything else?”
As of September 18, 2025, we have yet to receive an answer.
The real money is in eggs
ANIMALS 24-7 pointed out to both Block and Wayne Pacelle that despite the involvement of high-stakes gambling in some cockfights, and the associated criminal traffic in illegal drugs and firearms, the real money in cockfighting is in selling eggs.
All a cockfighter needs to sell eggs is one championship rooster and a flock of hens.
Of course the cockfighter will have to fight his gamecocks sometimes, and win enough to develop a reputation among cockfighters for winning, to keep selling eggs; but a cockfighter with three to five successful fighting birds can sell a lot of eggs between fights.
ANIMALS 24-7, incidentally, has a rescued rooster. Even one rooster, we have learned, can easily be more trouble, and more dangerous, than most people want a pet to be.
(See Chickens, rats, & my battle with leptospirosis, by Beth Clifton.)
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Thanks for the current info and it helps to go deeper into explaining why human animals abuse other animals in the first place.
Over here in Puerto Rico, boredom, feelings of insignificance and powerlessness, derived from non-conscious death anxiety, is what influences humans anywhere to use other animals, as a way to distract from thoughts of death.
Chickens are the most abused animals on the planet. Even without “cockfighting,” they suffer from birth (male chicks tossed in shredders, hens confined in tiny cages for their entire lives) until they are suspended upside down, only to have their throats slashed.
Unfortunately, people in the business of raising these animals are brainwashed from birth to have no compassion for them. I never understood how most of these people can call themselves “Christians!” I always thought that christians were taught that we should be the “stewards” of the earth, that we should love other creatures as God loves us. I guess that was all BS!
There were two roosters in our flock in the Mojave. One passed from natural causes, and the other was murdered by dogs of some kind, along with all but four of the hens. I miss them. They weren’t “pets” or objects to be exploited.
Sharing with gratitude.
Look at what happened in Fresno CA. The Board of Supervisors today approved an ordinance to limit the number of roosters to 5 in Fresno County and to require permits and fees for those wanting to keep 6 or more on their property.
This ordinance is a follow-up to reports of noise complaints and an effort to limit illegal fighting. The County has received numerous noise complaints from residents who neighbor households with dozens or more roosters.
Those wanting between 6 and 24 roosters (a male chicken older than 6 months) will be required to pay a permit fee of $240 per year following a $440 application fee.
I requested that the ordinance make exceptions allowing FFA, 4-H and other educational poultry projects so that they can exceed the limit of 5 while meeting the requirements in the ordinance that require proof of their use as educational animals. The other exception is for working poultry ranches where the primary commodity is eggs or meat that are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.