Living the life of a warden in the north country is like a quarterback going to the Super Bowl. It’s a dream come true – and for the job, it just doesn’t get much better.

Hunting, fishing, trapping, boating and snowmobiling abound in the heart of this big woods, so a day in the life of a warden can be vigorous, pressured and, as they say, extremely rewarding when a job is well done.

Take Maynard Pelletier. When Pelletier came home from the Pacific after World War II, he headed back to Allagash, where he came from.

Like a lot of the men who became part of the Maine Warden Service then, he was used to working and living in the woods. It was part of who he was. So becoming a protector of the state’s bounty of fish and game made a lot of sense to him. And for the next quarter of a century, he made it his life’s calling.

In the fall of 1951, he was sent to St. Pamphile, one of the most remote sections of northwest Maine on the Canadian border. There, the young warden stayed for three years, carving out a life most of us can’t hardly imagine now.

“There were no roads, so I had to travel by canoe and airplane. In ’52, my wife had twins, so she stayed at home in Allagash. It was hard on the family, but back then we didn’t think twice about it,” said the now 80-year-old Pelletier, who recalls a time of different country and different circumstance.

Yes, there were long hours, he said, but then, everybody in the woods worked long hours, so the work in the fledgling service was nothing different.

“That’s the way everyone was back then,” Pelletier said. “Nobody worked eight-hour days. You just more or less expected it. But those days, I loved them. It was the top of its time.”

Those days included walking by snowshoes from lumber camp to lumber camp, where the lumberjacks also hunted, fished and trapped – and knew of others who hunted, fished and trapped. Wardens had camps to build so they would have a place to live. There was a rabies epidemic to contend with. There were beaver problems. There was a lot of illegal hunting.

“There were no radios. We were on call 24 hours a day. Sometimes we’d be out three days before we finished a job. We’d be out nights searching for drowned persons or lost hunters,” Pelletier recalls.

Later, the man from Allagash worked places that have since come to the attention of international tourists, places like Eagle Lake, Churchill and the St. John River, and Umsaskis Lake, now part of the Allagash River Trip. But back then, wardens weren’t dealing with outdoor recreationists. They were literally building, and watching, in a big wood.

“For most wardens, it was a kind of way life, not a job,” agrees retired warden Charlie Davis of Shirley, whose career ended before the big boom of snowmobiles hit the back trails. “It was a thrill – just a way of life, where you’re doing some good and helping people along the way. Being a warden was a good feeling. There was a lot of activity, but not a lot of roads.”

Today, the big woods have changed and so has the job of the Maine warden. The jumping-off point to the Maine woods used to be Greenville, literally the last town before the endless stretch into hundreds of thousands of acres of forest.

Then came the Golden Road, which cut the woods in half, and linked Millinocket to Canada. In the years since, networks of roads have made for easier access to back places, and changed forever the life of a northern warden.

The hardscrabble life and outdoor tradition that once bred a comfortable, casual and less confrontational existence between woodsmen and wardens has been replaced by a structured dynamic that reflects the fast, political times of today.

Warden Lieutenant Pat Dorian in Greenville calls a day in the life of a warden today, “Like you’re on a fast-moving train – and you wanna be hangin’ on.”

Like yesterday’s wardens, today’s wardens say there is no typical day. Wardens at Division D headquarters on Moosehead Lake, a major nerve center between people and nature, say it’s still the diversity of the job and the connection to the outdoors that make being a warden so worthwhile.

“It’s a lifestyle – hunting, fishing, trapping – and it’s the idea of being independent and self-motivated,” says Dorian, on the beat now for almost 30 years.

Dorian and Warden Sergeant Roger Guay, best known for his search and rescue acumen with his K-9 dogs, have weathered some of the most controversial changes in the Maine Warden Service since its start more than 120 years ago.

The late 1990s proved to be a turning point for wardens, when a campaign of harsh criticism by some sportsmen was launched and a new era of standardization, checks and balances, and review was born. Today, public relations and documentation is as important to the warden service as the field work.

Wardens say they have adjusted to the changes. “It was a hard sell for the guys in green,” admitted Dorian. “But in time you do become accustomed to a new way of doing business. With age comes wisdom. Everyone has knowledge, based on their own experiences, and it’s important to listen and to find consensus among all those different voices.”

Today, wardens must maintain law enforcement training and communication courses to interact with an increasingly diverse public and demanding schedule. Wardens can no longer stop people in the woods for checks, unless they are signed, detailed, and organized in advance. A set of standards has been developed for mobilizing search and rescue teams. The time a warden spends on the job is well-monitored and compensation or pay is required.

In addition to enforcing fish and game laws and searching for missing persons, the development of recreational sport vehicles has added a whole new dimension to the job. Wardens are now responsible for enforcing laws for snowmobiles and ATVs, two of the fastest-growing sports in the state, and are responsible for covering all accidents off public roads.

Today, they say, the seasons hardly skip a beat, moving from one activity into another.

A hundred years has tamed the north country. There are more tourists and fewer woodsmen. Violators have turned nasty, as in the still unresolved case of the mass slaughter of nine moose and two deer.

But like the old days, wardens still take the job because they love the outdoors. They still think of what they do as a way of life, not just a job.

“The work ethic is incredible. We believe in what we do. Some days are absolutely tough, like working a serious snowmobile accident or finding a drowning victim, but others are absolutely incredible,” said Dorian.

“Truly and honestly, the greatest day is probably catching the serious violator or poacher you’ve known about for a long time,” said Guay, who added that it once took him three years, but with time and patience, he was able to make an arrest on a group of serious fish poachers. “It’s a very sweet thing when you can finally put it all together.”

Suzanne AuClair is an outdoor writer. For the past seven years she has covered the outdoors of the Moosehead Lake region for various publications. She can be reached at suzauclair@prexar.com.