I had no idea these meets even existed, and to make it worse, it appears attendance is higher than at some legal meets. If the comments are accurate, there are more illegal meets out there.
There hs been a recent (within the last couple of years) thread about this.
I wonder about some craiglist ads for “race horses”.
We used to have brush tracks here, people got word around and they would race down some country road on weekend afternoons and bet, all illegal here.
When I see those ads, I think that may still be going on?
Guess it does, about like dog and cock fighting?
I would think with satellite imaging today so good, it would be easy for police to find out where people are congregating and follow up with a “visit”.
These have gone on since time began. You didn’t think that when the dirt tracks of the 1700’s went away, that people who had a horse to race were going to let the fact that they couldn’t afford to go to a real track stop them, did you? This is just a slightly more modern version.
As for the needles and syringes, go to an unrated country fair American Saddlebred show in Kentucky during the Summer, and look in those trash cans.
Apparently, the “tracks” exist in Mexico, as well as the Southwest.
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There’s a QH track not a mile from my place through the woods. Shelby county, Alabama.we have called the cops on the music more than once. .nothing changes…
When pari-mutuel was legalized in Texas, demand for the illegal dirt tracks was not nearly what it was before. The better-heeled racing patrons preferred the more comfortable legal racing venues. Plus they could get performance metrics that are officially recorded and count for something.
But there is always a segment of the horse economy that prefers to do it this way, the illegal track way. Where they can do what they like, and bet as they like. Thousands of horses are caught up in this kind of racing.
