BIDDEFORD – Wal-Mart has halted gun sales at many of its stores, a change greeted with disappointment in a state with a strong hunting tradition.

All told, Wal-Mart has pulled guns from half of its 22 stores in Maine; six of the stores stopped selling guns this month.

“It’s a huge disappointment. They are a place where a lot of sportsmen shop for everything from firearms to fishing gear. Increasingly, they’re alienating people like us with decisions like that,” said George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine.

Wal-Mart began removing guns from the first of about 1,000 stores last March, concluding that there wasn’t enough demand to support gun sales. Instead, it decided to boost its offering of other sporting goods at those stores.

It’s all part of Wal-Mart’s “Store of the Community” strategy for boosting sales at stores by focusing on local differences in demand.

“This simply means that our merchandise selections reflect the items that our customers want to buy,” said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Marisa Bluestone.

In Maine, Wal-Mart stopped selling guns this month at its stores in Houlton, Rockland, Scarborough, Skowhegan and Windham, in addition to the store in Biddeford, according to a survey by The Associated Press.

Other locations that stopped selling guns were Calais, Ellsworth, Falmouth, Oxford and Sanford. The Mexico store plans to stop selling guns once its existing inventory is sold, a store worker said.

“As with any merchandise decision that we make, the decision to remove firearms was based on diminished customer demand for firearms in impacted local communities,” Bluestone said.

Even in stores that don’t sell guns, Wal-Mart will continue to sell ammunition, she said.

Maine has a strong hunting tradition. This is the home state of Leon Leonwood Bean, an outdoorsman and hunter who founded L.L. Bean. And about 160,000 residents purchase hunting licenses in Maine, a state of 1.3 million people.

But the number of hunters has been dropping. About 20,000 fewer people purchase hunting licenses compared to a peak of 181,000 in 1993, according to Marc Michaud of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

For Wal-Mart, the issue of guns represents an interesting twist because its “roots are in the rural community,” said John Lawrence, a retail analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co. in Memphis, Tenn.

It could be that rifles and shotguns are not profitable enough for Wal-Mart in an era of big-box sporting goods retailers like Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops, he said. And there could be more profit in ammunition than guns, he said.

“There’s a rhyme or a reason to what they’re trying to do,” Lawrence said.

Damon Waters, 39, of Saco, said he can understand why a Wal-Mart store in an urban location might not see demand for rifles and shotguns.

But Waters, a target-shooting enthusiast, was angry to learn that guns had been pulled this month from the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Biddeford.

“I’m done with Wal-Mart and I’ve been a lifelong shopper,” said Waters, who has been shopping at Wal-Mart since he was boy growing up in Missouri.

The National Rifle Association said it has been assured by Wal-Mart that its decision to shun guns in some markets is not politically motivated.

“While we take Wal-Mart at their word, we are monitoring them closely because this would have a huge impact on hunters and sportsmen in rural areas for their hunting and shooting needs,” said Chris W. Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist.

Not everyone was upset about Wal-Mart’s decision.

Catherine Crowley, whose teenage son killed himself in 2004 with a shotgun purchased at the Auburn Wal-Mart, questioned whether Wal-Mart employees receive appropriate training for dealing with the sale of shotguns and rifles.

“Gun sales should be left to people who are qualified, like the hunting and sporting good stores,” Crowley said.