Ah, November in rural Maine. Rising well before light, the smell of eggs and bacon and coffee brewing, the gathering of gun, red and black plaid wool coat, blaze-orange hats and vests, and heading out to a bitter cold pickup truck to head to the woods.

While we Americans focus so much time and effort on money and its pursuit, when we are truly honest with ourselves and reflect, it’s actually life experiences and our relationships with friends and family that are really the key to a quality life. Yes, a livelihood and creature comforts are important but the reality is they take a back seat to what we actually experience day in and day out. That is why so many of us love to live in Maine in spite of some of the economic sacrifices we make to do so. It is also why we react so strongly when our way of life is threatened.

One of the many and varied components of the Maine way of life is our outdoor heritage. It lends richness to what makes Maine Maine and us Mainers. It is especially part of the fabric of rural Maine and while important to its economy, it is even more important to its way of life and the quality of that life.

For the past 30 years or so, quietly lost on the vast majority of Maine people and policymakers, a key aspect of our outdoor heritage has taken a dramatic turn for the worse and has declined so markedly that it is nearly non-existent. That is the hunting of whitetail deer.

Over this time while the deer population has grown in the lower part of Maine and in overall numbers, our rural areas in the north, east and west have experienced a steep decline to a level where it is near death. A quick look at deer kill numbers bear that out. In township after township throughout the vast North Woods the deer kill is either zero, one or two in number. A stunning and tragic decline over the past 30 years.

How did this happen? In order to survive the tough Maine winters deer need a very specific type of shelter known as a deer wintering area in which to reside. Over the past 30 years those thick stands of trees that give them critical, life-sustaining shelter have been cut down to the point of being nearly non-existent. While critically important they represented only a tiny fraction of the trees in our large forests. The deer instinctively return to the same wintering area every year but when it’s no longer there they don’t go off and find another. They stay there and perish.

Now to be sure the owners of our forest lands have every right to harvest their resource. But as with most rights there are responsibilities and limitations that go with them. Though I have rights because I own my house and land, it doesn’t allow me to do anything I please with that land. There are zoning restrictions and environmental laws that temper my rights. These limitations are there to ensure the rights of others are not infringed and the general welfare of the citizenry is preserved.

This should be the case with our forests. We need balance. We need to care for our forest-based economy but we also need to care for our outdoor heritage and the quality of life of our citizenry.

What is at stake? Some of the very experiences I referred to earlier that make us who we are and our lives rich. Is this only about killing deer? Not even close. It’s stopping into a coffee shop and seeing a sea of orange. It’s about being woken by your dad to head to the woods long before you’re ready to leave your warm bed. It’s meeting your sons, your dad or your best friends back at the truck at noon to compare notes on the morning’s hunt and warm up with a cup of coffee.

It’s meeting back at the truck at twilight when the cold has set in right through your green wool pants and your cheeks are numb from the cold. It’s long talks about life during breaks in the hunt. It’s passing on hunting stories to sons and grandsons over and over. These experiences have lifelong affects, deepen important bonds and change lives for the better. They need to be preserved.

We need to find a balance of private property rights and the rights of all Mainers to enjoy the outdoors and the pursuit of happiness. One need not be exclusive of the other, yet right now they are. We also need leadership on this issue. We need leaders willing to fight for the rural Maine way of life and take this issue head on even if they’re not outdoors people themselves. Without this leadership generations of young Mainers will never experience the full richness of November in Maine.

Steven Michaud is a native of Caribou and resident of Topsham. He has been an avid outdoorsman and hunter for over 35 years.