How fox hunting has managed to survive, and thrive, in Virginia (2025)

Whenever a young Susan Travellin was asked “What do you want?” her answer was the same: a horse.

But growing up in Jersey City, New Jersey — which is decidedly more urban jungle than open pasture — her equestrian dreams were never realized in childhood. It was only after she graduated from Marymount University that she was able to scrape together enough money to purchase a horse of her own. While visiting the barn where she kept her new prized possession, she met someone who suggested she expand her equine world and give fox hunting a try.

“I tried it, and I was hooked,” Travellin told The Daily Progress.

Almost 50 years later, she still has not lost that thrill for the hunt.

She hopes she never does. But in a world in which traditions seem to be fading fast and rapid development is quickly destroying the natural environment, Travellin and other fox hunters know it will take more than passion to keep their sport alive. Fox hunting has been practiced for 490 years, and if its advocates hope to keep it around for another 490, it will mean educating the public, lobbying lawmakers and working closely with landowners.

On an early October morning, Travellin was beaming from atop her mount as she made her rounds at Sunny View Plantation in Louisa County, greeting the nearly 40 others in the field (the participants in the day’s hunt) and gathering their waivers in her role as field secretary.

The day’s outing into the country (the designated territory of a hunt club), organized by the Keswick Hunt Club, was one of 15 taking place across the commonwealth as part of Virginia Hunt Week.

The dress code in Louisa County was “ratcatcher,” which means participants are permitted to dress in tweeds and tan breeches instead of the more formal red coats (called pinks) and white breeches typically associated with the sport. Ratcatchers and pinks, country and field — the ancient language of fox hunting makes clear it is a tradition steeped in history, and that is part of its appeal.

It’s also an exhilarating and exacting athletic sport, one that people of all ages can pursue, Travellin pointed out.

“I just like the traditions. It’s also a sport I could do with my horse; I could do it for most of my life. I think I was 22 when I first started fox hunting. I’m 71 now,” said Travellin, who joined the Keswick Hunt Club when she moved to Virginia 12 years ago. “It becomes a part of your life.”

Most take up fox hunting much earlier than Travellin. Murdoch Matheson, along with his wife Susie, were introduced to the sport by their families when they were young children. The couple has started to get back into the sport later in life as empty nesters, with their three children in or already graduated from college, Susie Matheson told The Daily Progress.

“It’s all age groups and all walks of life; everybody’s not from the same background,” she said. “I think that’s hard to find in the community. ... There’s a lot of community out here of all different ages, kids to 80-year-olds out on the horses.”

Like Travellin, Murdoch Matheson said he has never lost the thrill for the hunt, that desire to rise before the dawn, clad himself in 18th century hunting garb and spend the morning on horseback in dew-soaked pastures following a pack of high-spirited American foxhounds — at least during the hunting season from September through March.

Bred and raised at the Keswick Hunt Club, which has been operating in the village of Keswick just east of Charlottesville since 1896, the roughly 60 hounds of the Keswick pack are specifically trained to only track the scent of foxes; not to kill, only to chase.

Though Murdoch Matheson’s day job is vice president and managing broker for Sotheby’s International Realty, when he’s out in the field he’s the master of the hounds.

Masters of the hounds are “like the CEOs” of the hunt club, said Travellin.

“My day starts before this day,” Murdoch Matheson told The Daily Progress, while preparing his horse, a former steeplechaser by the name of Formidable Heart, for the hunt. “I alert a lot of these landowners where we’re hunting, and I tell them all different fixtures of where we’re hunting throughout the week.”

A day’s hunt can cover a couple thousand acres, he said, and through various relationships and negotiations with landowners in Louisa County, the 200 members of the Keswick Hunt Club have pieced together 8,000 contiguous acres of country where it is free to give chase there.

The club has managed to establish a total of more than 30,000 acres across all of Central Virginia.

That freedom to roam is another part of the ancient tradition of fox hunting, established centuries ago in England. But it recently came under threat in Virginia.

In April 2022, three Virginians attempted to challenge state code, commonly known as the “right to retrieve,” that allows hunters to go unannounced onto private property in order to get any hunting dogs that may have gotten carried away in the chase.

Ultimately, the attempt failed in the Henrico County Circuit Court, a decision that was later affirmed by the Supreme Court of Virginia this past September.

“It’s through the generosity of all of our many great landowners and supporting landowners that fox hunting exists at all,” Murdoch Matheson said, after pointing out the club added GPS devices to the hounds’ collars in response to the recent controversy. “We wouldn’t be able to hunt foxes if we weren’t able to cross other people’s property, and they’re all very supportive, and so we’re very appreciative of that.”

Travellin agreed, acknowledging that fox hunting’s longevity in Virginia will rely on participants supporting local farmers, preserving open land and maintaining “good landowner relationships.”

She considers this last piece to be the most immediate threat to the future of the sport. Encroaching development drove her south from New Jersey years ago in pursuit of wide, open hunt country.

“There are hunts even around Middleburg [the heart of the traditional Virginia Hunt Country] who have had this common sense to have a lot of their land in preservation so it can’t be developed,” she said, adding that, several decades ago, hunt clubs in Fauquier and Orange counties pushed to conserve about 80% of the land where they hunt.

The expansion of data centers across the commonwealth, but especially in Northern Virginia, is of particular concern, according to Travellin. Virginia is now the data center capital of the world, with more than 300 already built and more in the pipeline. Not only do the facilities require plenty of land, but they also need additional infrastructure to support them, such as electrical and water lines and power stations.

Along with protecting open spaces, hunt clubs are also making an effort to foster a love of the hunt in younger generations, ensuring the tradition never dies. The earliest known attempt at a fox hunt was in 1594, exactly 490 years ago, in Norfolk, England. The sport came over to America with the first English colonists and was a favorite of the Founding Fathers; George Washington was recorded hosting weeklong fox hunts at his Mount Vernon estate in Fairfax County, frequently joined by Thomas Jefferson.

To recruit new blood nowadays, Travellin said many clubs often put on “junior hunts” to welcome younger or inexperienced hunters to the sport.

“Get them excited, get them interested, make it very friendly for them, so that they have good memories,” she said. “So that they come back to it, maybe after college, maybe after children. And that’s what they do.”

Travellin is a testament to the fact that fox hunting is something people can be a part of “for the rest of their lives.” Aside from the hunt, the Keswick club also provides a social component for members with other recreational activities and events throughout the year.

“What keeps the tradition alive, I think, the camaraderie and association with field sport,” Keswick Hunt Club president Peter Taylor told The Daily Progress. “The hunt club has really become sort of a community center, we’ll have 25 or 30 parties every year. … So it’s really evolved as a center of the community.”