Being six feet two inches tall, and slender rather than heavily made, he was well fitted for athletic sports.

Tradition says that he once threw a stone across the Rappahannock at a spot where no other man could do it, and that he could outjump any one in Virginia.

He also excelled in the game of putting the bar, as a story related by the artist Peale bears witness.
Of outdoor sports he seems to have enjoyed hunting most.

He probably had many unrecorded experiences with deer and turkeys when a surveyor and when in command upon the western border, but his main hunting adventure after big game took place on his trip to the Ohio in 1770.

Though the party was on the move most of the time and was looking for rich land rather than for wild animals, they nevertheless took some hunts.
On October twenty-second, in descending the stretch of the Ohio near the mouth of Little Beaver Creek and above the Mingo Town, they saw many wild geese and several kinds of duck and "killed five wild turkeys." Three days later they "saw innumerable quantities of turkeys, and many deer watering and browsing on the shore side, some of which we killed." He does not say whether they shot this game from the canoe or not, but probably on sighting the game they would put to shore and then one or more would steal up on the quarry.