The Scarlet Coats Crossing Blue Mill Road Aren't a Weekly Sight Anymore, and Here's Why

If you've lived in New Vernon long enough, you've had the moment. You're driving down Blue Mill Road on a Wednesday in October, or maybe you're at Bayne Park watching the water, and you hear a horn. Then riders in scarlet coats and a pack of hounds crosses in front of you, moving fast, gone in under a minute. No one warned you. No one's chasing anything you can see. You assume this happens all the time in a township with this much open land and this many old estates.

It doesn't, and that's the part worth knowing if you want to catch it on purpose instead of by accident.

What You're Actually Watching

The pack that crosses through town belongs to Spring Valley Hounds, a hunt club founded in 1915 when Seth Thomas Jr. had a draft of hounds shipped over from England by the Duke of Beaufort and kenneled them in Green Village with an English huntsman named Percy Drury running the pack. It's a drag hunt, which means the hounds are following a scent line laid down in advance rather than tracking a live animal. No fox is chased or harmed. What you're seeing is closer to a moving reenactment than a hunt in the literal sense, though the etiquette is dead serious. Senior male members wear the scarlet jackets known as "pinks." Senior women wear black or dark blue with colored collars. Hounds are never counted individually. Thirteen hounds is "six and a half couples."

The formal version of this that residents can actually plan around is Harding Land Trust's annual Formal Hunt at Margetts Field, sometimes listed under Blue Mill Fields. It's timed to a specific October morning, the hounds and horses set off around mid-morning and cross Harding Land Trust's equestrian trail network, and the event only works because the Bridle Path Association, Spring Valley Hounds, and the Harding Township Police Department coordinate it together. That last detail matters more than it sounds. Riders have the right of way on public roads during the event, which is not something you'll find posted anywhere else in town.

Bayne Park Was Named for a Man Who Rode With This Hunt

Here's the connection most residents miss. Bayne Park, the small pond-centered park at Glen Alpin and Blue Mill Roads where a lot of people go to fish or skate in winter, exists because Howard Bayne, a Manhattan bank executive who settled in the area, donated the land to the township in 1937. Bayne wasn't just a landowner with a civic streak. Decades earlier, when Spring Valley Hounds was still a private pack run by invitation out of Seth Thomas Jr.'s kennels in Green Village, Bayne was one of the regular guests riding with it, alongside names like Henry Colgate and Hartley Dodge.

So when Harding Land Trust lists Bayne Park as one of the "good viewing opportunities" for the fall hunt, that's not a coincidence of geography. The park and the hunt share a donor. The same man who used to ride the fields north of the village gave the township the pond you're standing next to when you watch his old hunt cross the property line.

Why the Sightings Got Rare

Here's the part that actually explains why you don't see this every week anymore. Spring Valley Hounds still holds its formal territory rights to New Vernon, but the club shifted most of its operational base decades ago, splitting time between the original New Vernon country and Allamuchy in Warren County, where the kennels are now located. Equestrian journalist Nancy Jaffer, who has covered New Jersey's hunt clubs for years, put the reason plainly: the club now visits New Vernon only a few times a season because the area is far less horse-oriented than it used to be, even though the trail system and a small showgrounds are still intact.

That's the mechanism. It isn't that the tradition faded. It's that the land use around it changed faster than the club did, so the hunt followed the horses and the open country northwest to Sussex County, and New Vernon became an occasional stop instead of a weekly one. If you're picturing Harding Township as it was fifty years ago, when this kind of pack ran through multiple times a week, you're picturing a different township. The one you live in now gets a handful of formal visits a year, timed mostly around that October event.

Where to Actually Stand

If you want to see it without relying on luck, two spots do the work: Bayne Park and Margetts Field, both named on Harding Land Trust's own event page as the places where the hunt is visible as it crosses the trail network. A few things to know before you go:

• Riders and hounds have the right of way once the event starts. If you're driving through the area that morning, expect brief stops.
• Leave pets at home. Loose dogs near a working pack are a genuine safety issue for both the animal and the hounds, and it's the one rule Harding Land Trust repeats every year.
• The hunt typically departs mid-morning, so arriving by mid-morning gives you the best chance of seeing the pack before it moves out of the immediate viewing area.
• This is a drag hunt. If you're expecting a chase, you'll be watching a controlled, choreographed run along a pre-set line instead, which is actually easier to predict once you know the departure point.

The Other Way to See Them Up Close

There's a second, less-known way to get closer than sideline viewing. Spring Valley Hounds runs three hunter paces a year, open to public participation, not just members. As of late August 2026, the club's own schedule lists this year's dates as April 18, September 20, and November 1, meaning the September date is coming up fast and the November date is still ahead. A hunter pace is a marked course, usually eight to ten miles with jumps that have go-arounds for anyone who'd rather skip them, ridden in teams of two or three at a pace judges compare to an ideal time. It's a fundraiser for the club's operating costs, and it's the version of this tradition where you can actually participate instead of just watching it cross the road.

For anyone trying to time a visit or confirm a date before heading out, the club keeps a hunt hotline for real-time updates, since fixtures can shift with weather and property access. That's a more reliable source than secondhand memory of what used to happen on a given weekday.

None of this changes what makes New Vernon worth living in day to day, the quiet roads, the trail network, the sense that the land still does what it's always done even as the people using it change. But it does mean the assumption a lot of longtime residents carry, that this is a weekly fixture you'll eventually catch again, isn't quite right anymore. It's a handful of mornings a year, mostly clustered around one October event, and knowing that turns an accidental sighting into something you can actually plan for.

If you're weighing a move into Harding Township, or you already live here and you're curious what else about this land and its history shapes daily life more than the listing photos ever will, Harding Luxury Homes has spent years paying attention to exactly this kind of detail. Let's Connect.