THE dense woods of northern New England are crackling these chilly November days with the sound of rifle shots: the deer-hunting season opened in mid-month and is in full swing. But the camouflaged shooters are not roaming the forests quite as they did in the past. In (non-native) America's oldest hunting grounds, the sport is in slow decline.

In Vermont the number of hunting licences sold has dropped 12% over the past ten years. In New Hampshire, where 60,000 resident and visiting hunters contribute $83m annually to the small state's economy, the decline is even steeper: a 28% drop in licences since 1996.

The ceasefire causes problems, since the fees are used to help pay for wildlife management. Judy Stokes, of New Hampshire's Department of Fish and Game, identifies several causes: the loss of hunting areas to housing and commercial development; the competing demands on family time posed by sport and other weekend activities for children; and a changing social structure. “It takes a hunter to make a hunter, and fewer fathers are bringing up their children as hunters,” she says.

Of New England's northern states, only Maine has seen the popularity of hunting hold steady. The number of licences issued there has stayed at about 200,000 since 1993. Paul Jacques, of the state wildlife department, thinks this is because Maine is better than its neighbours at keeping game and fish populations high for hunters and anglers. The state has also encouraged both young and old to join the hunt. It has introduced a $500 lifetime licence for children under 16, and Maine citizens aged 70 years and older can buy a lifetime licence for $8.

Maine has a special incentive to protect its outdoors. Its gross state product is less than $50 billion, and the contribution of hunting, fishing, bird-watching, boating and so on is put at $2.5 billion—a vital statistic in a state where L.L. Bean, an outdoors catalogue company, ranks among the five largest employers.