EAST KINGSTON, N.H. – Buttoned up in a bright orange jacket, Eric Sands, 12, slung a 20-gauge shotgun over his shoulder and trudged into the woods before dawn to do what men in his family have done here for generations: hunt for deer.

Later that morning, he arrived at Jewett’s General Store to register his quarry, a 125-pound doe that weighed more than he does. “I was jumping up and down, like ‘woo-hoo,’ when I hit it,” he proudly told fellow hunters gathered in the parking lot. “Next time I want to get a bear.”

Eric’s recent foray was part of an effort by hunting organizations to get young people interested in a pastime that once helped define the nation. The number of Americans who hunt each year fell by 7 percent between 1996 and 2001, according to a government survey. The decline, fueled by creeping urbanization and the increasing appeal of indoor activities, also means there aren’t as many 12-year-olds hunting.

“There are fewer rural areas than there used to be in this country and fewer people living in them,” said Robert Spitzer, political science professor at the State University of New York at Cortland and author of a recent book on gun control. “It used to be that if you lived in these places, you had to make your own fun. But with video games and the Internet and cable TV, you don’t need to live in a city to have things to do anymore. Hunting is falling by the wayside as a result.”

The trend has broad political, cultural and ecological implications for states such as Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, where hunting has long been a cherished practice. So a loose affiliation of government agencies, private industry groups and gun rights advocates has launched an effort to save what many view as a way of life.

Youth hunting days, which offer children a chance to learn hunting skills and gun safety from adult guides before the start of the official season, were instituted nationwide in the late 1990s. They have gained in popularity and are among several new programs geared toward boosting participation.

The Connecticut-based National Shooting Sports Foundation gave a $250,000 grant this summer to the Big Brothers Big Sisters program to fund an “outdoor mentors” program for children. The National Wild Turkey Federation, a 500,000-member group based in South Carolina that promotes hunting and conservation, drafted a public school curriculum with a wilderness theme and last year awarded cash prizes to teachers who used it most effectively.

John Annoni, a schoolteacher in Allentown, Pa., who says he wants to “do for hunting and fishing what Tiger Woods has done for golf,” founded Camp Compass, a rural retreat that exposes about 60 inner-city youths each year to outdoor activities.

“To keep this sport alive, we’ve got to start breeding outside of the kennel. We’ve counted on traditional groups for too long,” said Annoni, who took a group of first-timers deer hunting and salmon fishing this fall in Pennsylvania and upstate New York. “I want to take these ideas to Harlem and Compton and Philly and New York.”

Many states have introduced wilderness courses for women, who make up less than 15 percent of all hunters, under the moniker of Becoming an Outdoors-Woman.

“You hear that part of the reason hunting is down is that there are so many single mothers out there who don’t have the skills to pass on to their kids,” said Judy Silverberg, who teaches in New Hampshire’s BOW program, which gets about twice as many applicants as it has spots available for its annual weekend classes. Hunting, she said, is “one of the things that makes New Hampshire New Hampshire, and we don’t want to see it go away.”

In addition to the importance of preserving traditions, those working to regenerate interest in hunting say it plays an important role in controlling animal populations, especially deer. Just as important, they also say, is hunting’s economic impact: In 2001, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, hunters pumped $21 billion into the U.S. economy.

So far, however, the results of these projects have been mixed, at best.

In Maine, which recently held its second annual youth deer-hunting day, sales of junior hunting licenses have dropped steadily since the mid-1980s, though there was a slight rise last year. New Hampshire does not track youth participation, but the number of deer killed on youth hunting days jumped from 95 in the inaugural year of 1999 to 265 last year. Overall, however, the number of hunting licenses issued to adults in both states is down by as much as 10 percent since 2000. Similar statistics can be found in many states.

A new Fish and Wildlife Service survey found that youths ages 8 to 18 had a much more favorable image of hunting than they did two decades ago – 56 percent have a good impression of hunting compared with 46 percent in 1980. But that has yet to translate into more hunters.

“There is no statistical evidence yet that anything is helping to stem the overwhelming decline,” Spitzer said. “The struggle has yet to really gain traction.”

Not everyone wants to reverse the decline of hunters. Towns such as East Kingston, a thickly forested hamlet of fewer than 1,800 residents just across the border from Massachusetts, are on the front lines of a growing battle between those trying to save hunting from extinction and animal rights and gun control advocates, who see opportunity in its demise. In the past few decades, much of New Hampshire – New England’s fastest-growing state – and Maine have been slowly subsumed by the northward expansion of suburban Boston, the region’s largest metropolitan center.

“The hunting industry has put a lot of money into research on how to get more kids to not just try it once but to become lifetime hunters. They’ve found that if kids don’t try it by 14 or 15, they won’t hunt. So that is where they are focusing their efforts,” said Michael Markarian of the Fund for Animals. “We oppose the killing of animals for sport. Young people have a natural affinity for animals. They should not be taught to kill them for fun.”

The divide is recasting political debates about such issues as gun control and animal rights in states where powerful constituencies of sportsmen have advocated effectively for some of the country’s most permissive gun laws and hunting regulations.

Sally Slovenski, who directs the gun violence prevention project at a Massachusetts group called Join Together, said gun control organizations are “starting to make more headway on a variety of issues throughout New England. Our opponents are losing numbers fast, and they know it.”

An effort to get a ballot initiative that would end the use of dogs and traps to hunt bears in Maine is gaining momentum – the practice was banned in Massachusetts in 1996. In recent years, towns nationwide have placed tighter restrictions on where people are allowed to look for game.