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GEORGE SMITH: Maine nowhere in sight in list of nation’s top sites for sportsmen

In June, Outdoor Life magazine published its third annual ranking of the best towns in America for hunters and fishermen. The results for Maine were discouraging.

Three Maine towns made the list of the top 200, but not because they’re at the top of the list for traveling sportsmen.

Outdoor Life’s rankings are based on socioeconomic and outdoor-related factors. Socioeconomic categories include population growth since 2000, median household income and home value, cost of living, population density, commute time and amenities.

Outdoor-related factors include the gun-friendliness of each town’s state, huntable and fishable species nearby, proximity to public land and waters, and the potential for taking a trophy-caliber animal or fish nearby.

If you wonder why Maine’s outdoor economy is in decline, a close examination of  Outdoor Life’s rankings provides some insight.

While we pride ourselves on our outdoor heritage and lifestyle, sportsmen, including yours truly, these days go elsewhere for the very best hunting and fishing. Maine has lost tens of thousands of hunters and anglers in the last two decades.

Most of them have not stopped hunting and fishing; they’ve just stopped hunting and fishing in Maine.

Over the years, I’ve received many letters from nonresident sportsmen who have given up on Maine because their outdoor opportunities are so much better elsewhere. For example, we’re suffering a wholesale flight by nonresident deer hunters after a sharp decline in our deer herd in the fabled North Woods.

Outdoor Life’s rankings confirm that the nation’s best deer hunting is no longer in Maine, once a top destination. The closest to Maine of the top 20 “Whitetail Wondertowns” is Easton, Md.

And it’s all about habitat and access. Most of the top 20 in hunting categories have great wildlife habitat and lots of public land, both state and federal.

Consider this description for Phillips, Wis. “Located in the heart of Wisconsin’s Northwoods, Phillips offers whitetail hunters easy access to the 90,000-acre Flambeau River State Forest and the 857,000-acre Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forests. … Those piney clusters and stands of hardwoods, which lured tree men and provided the area with an economic boost more than a hundred years ago, today draw hunters to some of the finest whitetail hunting anywhere in the upper Midwest.”

The most distressing thing about the rankings to me is the failure to recognize our state’s most unique resource: native brook trout and landlocked salmon.

My heart sank as I perused the “Top Trout Towns” list, offering the “best opportunities for trout, salmon and steelhead.” Of the top 20, Oswego, N.Y., is the closest to Maine. No mention of our state, which is home to 97 percent of the nation’s wild native brook trout.

Well, we did slip one town onto the “Bass Capitals” list, but not the town you’d expect. Once in the heart of the nation’s best brook trout angling, Presque Isle is apparently now known primarily for bass fishing, a mixed blessing.

Well, surely with our world-class coastal duck and upland bird hunting, we’d make the “For the Birds” list. Nope.

But I was pleased to see I’m pheasant hunting in the right place: North Dakota. My fall trip with Jim Robbins of Searsmont to Bismarck, one of two North Dakota sites on the bird hunting list, is a highlight of my hunting year.

Well, where did Maine excel?

Best place to retire and “live like a king?” Sorry. We may have the oldest population in the country, but apparently our retirees could do better elsewhere.

Camden and Cumberland made the “Best towns for kids” list for great schools, determined by performance on standardized tests. Camden also made the coastal fishing list, a bit of a mystery to me. Presque Isle made the “Remote Possibilities” list of towns with few people.

Having been to 33 of the top 200 towns in these rankings, I can’t find fault with most of the magazine’s lists.

What are the lessons for Maine? Many stand out, but here are two.

Even though we have great bear and moose hunting, the loss of our deer herd in the top half of the state, and the lack of other big-game species, will keep us off these lists in the future.

And here’s a lesson specific to central Maine from a top-10 best town overall: Saratoga, Wyo.

“The motto for this charming little town … in south-central Wyoming’s lush Platte River Valley is ‘Where the Trout Leap in Main Street.’ Indeed, the North Platte River runs right through town…”

Augusta and Waterville, take note!



George Smith is executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine. He lives in Mount Vernon and can be reached at george@samcef.org.

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