During the past 10 years, the sale of nonresident hunting licenses in Maine has fallen more than the Stock Market. In the year 2000, 40,221 nonresident hunters bought Maine hunting licenses. Ten years later, that number spiraled down to 27,898. That’s 70 percent fewer nonresident hunters in just a decade, a worrisome trend, especially if part of your living relies on the once-robust revenue flow from nonresident hunters.

What’s going on? Rightfully concerned about this dismal statistic, the Maine Legislature passed LD 792, which reads: Resolve, Establish a Task Force to Examine the Decline in the Number of Non-resident Hunters. This task force has been meeting all year and expects to deliver its final recommendations to the state legislature by the end of this month.

It will be interesting to see these recommendations. Don’t expect to see a “silver bullet.” If you are a deer hunter, your observation is apt to be: “Why, it’s a no-brainer. Fewer deer, fewer hunters.” And you would be partly right. Non-residents tend to be North Woods big buck hunters. There is no doubt that this demographic group knows that our big woods deer numbers are way down. They are staying away in droves.

The other conventional theory is that the economic downturn has contributed to the decline of non-resident hunters in Maine. A limp economy may figure into the equation, but probably not as much as we’d like to believe. For, at the same time that non-resident hunting license sales have tanked, the number of non-resident whitewater rafters and snowsledders has gone up!

In trying to break down this puzzle in manageable pieces, the task force will surely acknowledge the national trend: fewer hunters every year. Any solutions or recommendations coming from this task force, will only be as good as the analysis of the problem. There is not much a legislative task force can do to change cultural shifts and national economic trends, but there are two likely, state-specific causes for the decline of Maine non-resident hunters. These are causes over which Maine policymakers have some control: whitetail recovery and hunting access.

You can be sure that loss of hunting access is increasingly discouraging for both resident and non-resident hunters. More specifically, loss of hunting access in areas where the deer are. The National Shooting Sports Foundation conducted a nation-wide study on hunting access and had this to say: “Much research has been devoted to assessing the decline in hunting participation and hunting dissatisfaction. One reason that hunters increasingly report as a cause of dissatisfaction is poor hunting access. Access problems negatively affect hunters by taking away from their enjoyment of hunting and/or causing them to hunt less often. Previous studies have shown that access is a leading reason for hunters’ dissatisfaction, and that not enough available hunting access is a significant factor that influences hunters’ decisions to stop hunting.”

An integral part of the hunting access issue are the evermore complicated and – at times – ambiguous, confusing Maine trespass laws. Many hunters, trying to figure out what they can or can’t legally do when it comes to hunting private property, simply give up in exasperation. Two hunting-related trespass incidents that took place this fall underscore this point. In one, a deer hunter tracked a wounded deer that crossed over and then expired on posted private property. The property owner adamantly disallowed the hunter from retrieving his deer and, reportedly, there was nothing that the game warden could do to dissuade the irate property owner. In yet another case, a deer hunter tracked an 8-point buck in the snow. The buck was shot on posted property that the hunter was entitled to hunt, or that he thought he was entitled to hunt. (The hunter earlier had received oral permission.) The landowner, who apparently had a change of heart, filed a complaint of trespass. The warden confiscated the hunter’s deer and issued a summons for civil trespass.

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife recently named its former publicist Mark Latti to head up its division of Landowner Relations. Part of Mark’s charge is to stem the tide of property postings against hunting. Latti is a capable, savvy individual with an important job to do. With him at the helm of Maine’s landowner relations program, along with the recommendations of the aforementioned task force, perhaps there is hope that Maine can attract non-resident hunters back to the Pine Tree State.

The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WQVM-FM 101.3) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected] and his new book is “A Maine Deer Hunter’s Logbook.”