Grosvenor Merle-Smith is certainly a hunting man… and, no doubt, born to it! His parents hunted. His grandfather, Van Santvoord Merle-Smith was a cavalry man known to have demonstrated his Cossack trick-riding skills while out hunting by tumbling off over a high wall and vaulting back in the saddle without missing a beat, finishing the run up front with the huntsman and receiving the honors. On Grosvenor’s mother’s side, his great Aunt, Charlotte Haxall Noland was Master of the Middleburg Hunt.  Grosvenor’s 10-times-great-grandfather was Sir Robert Brooke, a younger son of the Earl of Warwick, credited with bringing the first pack of hounds entered solely to fox to the American colonies in 1650.

Grosvenor was born in Winchester, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Middleburg, Virginia, the heart of fox hunting in America.  Grosvenor and his wife, Rosie, live in Virginia on a lovely farm and on hunting days now follows three of the local packs in an electric Polaris.