MEDWAY – Fighting off exhaustion and a cold, Shelly Lee wouldn’t stop searching for her brother Wednesday.

It had been exactly seven days since 47-year-old Carroll Lyons Jr. was last seen, shotgun in hand, standing by a bridge on JR Mack Road between 1 and 4 p.m., and Lee, who had been up since daybreak, was feeling the stress and frustration of her brother’s mysterious disappearance.

“The days have kind of run together,” Lee said Wednesday. “I just wish that we could come to the end of something.”

About 35 volunteers, mostly friends and family, continued to comb through woods between Interstate 95, Rockabema Stream, Routes 2 and 116, the Penobscot River and Lyons’ cabin at 2 JR Mack Road.

Volunteers from the Down East Emergency Medicine Institute of Bangor photographed the ground from an airplane Wednesday to help searchers.

As of Wednesday afternoon, they had found nothing, not even clues – bits of clothing, shotgun shells, boot prints or cigarette butts – that indicated Lyons’ presence.

Still, Lyons’ family has reason for hope, said Verne McMoarn of Chester, president of the Lincoln Search & Rescue Team, a volunteer organization that helps find lost people.

“He is an accomplished woodsman. He hasn’t been in the woods long enough to die of starvation, and there’s plenty of water out there, so it’s not likely that he would die of thirst,” McMoarn said. “There’s a very good chance, if nothing bad has befallen him, that he is alive at this point.”

State police detectives who were involved since Friday have all but stopped investigating.

Police believe the 26 bullet holes riddling the exterior of Lyons’ cabin came from Lyons’ shotgun and were put there by Lyons, possibly as a prelude to suicide, from inside. Some holes apparently were patched by him.

But none of his family or friends believes suicide is likely, and they ask anyone with knowledge of Lyons to call police at 866-2121, (800) 432-7381 or 746-3555.

Anyone who might have seen him last week or found possible clues as to his whereabouts along the logging roads and trails in the woods by Lyons’ home is asked to call the search headquarters at the Medway Volunteer Fire Department at 746-9618.

Volunteers should come to the fire station anytime from dawn to dusk today. They should bring thick, waterproof outdoor clothing, flashlights, water and good strong boots, as the terrain is very rough, said Susan Kynast of Machias, a Down East search team member.

Besides the airplane, the two volunteer organizations contributed global positioning satellite technology to the hunt, but they could use more GPS equipment, Kynast said.

“These guys [volunteer searchers] are really busting their butts,” McMoarn said. “All we have done is bring our knowledge of search and rescue efforts and organization to this.”

McMoarn directed searchers to move along logging roads and hunting trails, as people typically lost or hurt stay on those roads, but Lyons’ knowledge of the woods might have led him to take other routes, McMoarn said.

Lyons had plans to go hunting with a friend at the friend’s hunting camp last Wednesday or Thursday near Nedunkeunk Stream southeast of Stanley Farm, and the woods between his home and that camp are very thick, McMoarn said.

“If he had left the road, there are an endless number of roads he could have gone on,” McMoarn said.