Retired Army Brig. Gen. Billy Don Farris II and his farm in the background | McChrystal Group/Farris
Retired Army Brig. Gen. Billy Don Farris II bought about 80 acres in Gloucester County’s Ware Neck after more than 30 years in uniform, including a Purple Heart from Iraq. In an effort to keep things quiet as he sailed into retirement, he promptly posted the property with “no hunting” and “no trespassing” signs and put up some fencing where required.
While it was not intended to be a fortress of any kind, he wanted to ensure that no one could make the honest mistake of accidentally ending up on his slice of land. Unfortunately for Gen. Farris, his idea of quiet has allegedly been interrupted by packs of hunting hounds who he says have been coming through the place since at least 2020. With reports of hunting dogs traipsing through his garden, across his yard, onto his boat dock, into fenced lots used for horses and even one instance of a dog urinating on someone’s clothes during a family gathering, confrontations followed.
On New Year’s Day 2025, Farris caught up with a hunter he had already served with a trespass notice, where the hunter told him, as Farris tells it: “My dogs can’t read.” The sheriff’s office later told the hunter he hadn’t broken the law.
“My family and I have the right to the peace and enjoyment of our property without harassment and intimidation from hound hunters,” a letter Farris wrote to the sheriff in January 2025 said. “As these confrontations continue to escalate, I remain concerned for the safety of my family and potential acts of vandalism as retaliation.”
Farris Farm | PLF/Don Farris
This month Farris, represented at no cost by the Pacific Legal Foundation, sued Gloucester County Sheriff Darrell Warren in federal court. The claim is not asking the state of Virginia to ban hound hunting, he is instead asking a judge to say that when a posted owner tells a man to leave, the sheriff cannot treat that order as the problem.
Virginia Code § 18.2-136 is older than most of the people arguing about it and states that if the chase began on legal ground, hunters may follow their dogs onto prohibited land. Hunters of other game may go on only to retrieve but the catch is that anyone going to retrieve or follow dogs must be completely unarmed and cannot hunt while on the property. In addition to that, you can’t bring a truck without the owner’s say and refusing to identify yourself becomes a Class 4 misdemeanor.
A companion statute makes it a crime to intentionally turn dogs loose on posted land but says the mere presence of dogs is not proof of intent. That last bit is why a landowner can have four packs on his property in an afternoon and still hear that nothing criminal happened.
DWR’s own guidance is plainer than the shouting and states that the retrieve rule is a carve-out from criminal trespass, not a license to hunt the neighbor’s woods. The Gloucester Commonwealth’s Attorney has taken a harder line stating the code means what it says, and fencing is the practical answer. Farris says fencing 80 acres cut by rights-of-way is cost-prohibitive, and that right there is the local deadlock.
Virginia is unique in that most other states have no retrieve statute at all. If you cannot hunt the ground, you generally cannot walk it for a dog either, as is the case in neighboring North Carolina. Other states have slightly narrower takes, allowing hunters to enter on foot, unarmed, and get out of there immediately after retrieval. Michigan might be an example of the most useful contrast, allowing for the same level of unarmed retrieval, but only in cases where the owner has not already prohibited it.
That veto is the piece Virginia does not give Farris.
Even if the General wins an injunction against the sheriff’s policy, the statute will remain on the books. Hunters will still have a criminal-law safe harbor for an unarmed retrieve that started on legal ground and landowners will still have civil trespass. The reality is that it’s unlikely most landowners will want to spend a winter in a small-claims court over a Walker that cut a corner.
The practical settlement has always been manners that the code cannot write. For hound hunters, those should sound something like calling before you step on posted ground, taking the first “no” as the last word, keeping the pack off house lots and horse paddocks, and not sending a deputy to explain to a General why his signs are a suggestion. On the other hand, landowner cooperation looks like not shooting at dogs or holding them hostage, and not assuming that every houndsman is the one who cursed at you last November.
In the end, some general civility would settle this case and many others like it (or deem them unnecessary). Unfortunately, the statute is there because civility is seldom guaranteed.
The complaint was filed Sept. 4 in Newport News federal court. No hearing has been set.
