From a tree stand along the edge of a cut bean field in Queen Anne's County, dawn unfolded in pleasant and intriguing fashion, as the noises of wildlife rise with the light.
Canada geese resting a few hundred yards west on a tidal gut off the Chester River were the first to stir, voices among 6,000 birds breaking the stillness.
Within minutes, the calls and whistles of ducks arose, followed by the melodies of songbirds and the anxious commotion of squirrels rummaging on the woodland floor.
Among them were Delmarva fox squirrels, one of Maryland's protected species. One of them climbed a tree close to the stand and sat on a limb to gnaw at an acorn, at eye level with a hunter -- the wild animal endangered, but recovering; the civilized one among those threatened somewhat by changing times.
An hour past sunrise, and a day of talk and deer hunting with outfitter Charley Downs Jr. and a handful of his friends was nearly four hours old. Downs is concerned for the future of hunting and the future of the game he and his clients hunt.
Downs, 38, has spent 18 years guiding trips for deer, goose and ducks through Charley Downs Outfitters. During those years, deer populations have skyrocketed, duck populations have declined and Canada goose populations rose to incredible heights before plummeting to 30-year lows. Hunters, too, have changed, Downs said.
"Overall, hunting is not what it was even a few years ago," Downs said. "There are fewer hunters in the field and fewer good hunters among those that are.
"Hunting, despite what you might hear some people say, is not just killing. In fact, I don't want to deal with someone who comes out and just wants to kill, or shadow shooters who see deer behind every bush or tree. There aren't enough dollars out there to make it worth it.
"I don't even like to use the word kill," Downs said. "I use harvest, because I believe that, just like a farmer works a crop, hunters should work ducks, geese or deer. You take what nature and good management allow and no more, or even a little less."
And, Downs said, game should be taken discreetly, because what is a trophy to one person may be objectionable to others.
"A guy in waterfowl jewelry -- necklaces of neck and leg bands taken from birds they have harvested -- he's drawing attention to himself just as surely as a guy who straps a deer across the hood and drives down Route 50," Downs said. "That's manly? It's stupid.
"That says to everyone, 'I'm a killer, and proud of it.' And I think it hurts hunters, diminishes an image that already is taking a beating from anyone who doesn't hunt or doesn't understand hunting."
Downs has built a string of leases on farms in Eastern Shore counties, where waterfowl hunting is a tradition and where deer populations have grown beyond the tolerance of many landowners.
In many parts of Maryland, including all of the Eastern Shore, natural selection is negligible for deer populations, and game managers rely on hunters to reduce the herd.
Turning kids on to nature
Through the morning Wednesday, no deer were removed from the farm in Queen Anne's County, although four of nine hunters Downs had out elsewhere on the Shore harvested deer.
Shortly past noon, Dennis Dunn, a former crabber who now works in the shoreside part of the seafood industry, is poking fun at Downs, for whom he works during deer and waterfowl hunting seasons.
Downs, who manages a heating and air conditioning business and coaches youth league baseball in spring and summer, has recounted a short story about his 7-year-old son Justin, who at the age of 6 harvested his first two Canada geese.
"Yeah, and I can tell you just how he looked afterward," Dunn said, puffing out his chest and beginning an exaggerated swagger. "But the best thing was what he said to those [adult hunters] who hadn't got their limit: 'It's OK, you can have one of mine, I have two.' "
Downs, a parent more proud of Justin being on the honor role at Lothian Elementary School than the youngster's prowess from a goose pit, smiled good-naturedly and returned to one of his favorite subjects -- kids.
"You take a young person -- boy or girl -- and give them the outdoors instead of a day at the mall, and you give them something they can have all their lives," Downs said. "You can give them self-reliance and self-respect, teach them the balance of things instead of Nintendo or arcade games. Teach them that the best things are those they earn, that you have to work for that shot on a goose or a deer just like you have to in anything
else.
"But I don't see many parents making the time to get their kids out -- not just to hunt, but to camp or hike, to walk through the woods and learn something about the natural world."
Fewer hunters in U.S.
The number of hunters is diminishing across America, by some estimates off more than 10 percent in the past five years. In part it is because the population continues to shift, with urban centers absorbing more people.
In Maryland, a random telephone survey funded by the Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division recently found that while 93 percent of respondents participated in some kind of outdoors recreation, only 8 percent were hunters.
In midafternoon, Downs and Steve McCombs were working their goose calls and speaking anxiously of the goose hunting season, which reopens Dec. 14 with a one bird per day bag limit.
The cut in the goose limit is responsible for increased deer hunting efforts on the Shore, because as the Canada goose population fell from an average of 518,100 from 1978 to 1986, to a low of 234,000 at midwinter in 1993, outfitters needed to find new methods of attracting hunters and maintaining leases on prime farms.
"Five years ago, when the seasons and bag limits were cut, I was considering bankruptcy," said Downs, whose annual outlay as an outfitter exceeds $50,000. "I didn't see how I could put out the money to lease farms and pay for feed and standing crops, decoys, field pits and blinds.
"I mean how were you going to get hunters to even cross the [bay] bridge for one bird per day, much less fly in from other states."
Combination hunts
As a result, Downs and other outfitters now offer combination hunts during waterfowl seasons -- goose or ducks in the morning, squirrel and rabbit or sporting clays at midday and bow hunts for deer in the late afternoon and early evening.
"[The increased emphasis on deer hunting] is not wholly coincidental, because the number of deer and the crop and shrubbery damage they cause farmers and smaller landowners has been on the rise for a number of years," Downs said, "but the change in goose hunting has spurred it on."
Late in the afternoon, after much talk of a shadowy, 12-point buck that had been sighted infrequently along the bean field, three hunters were positioned along its southern edge.
As evening closed in, the noises rose again. Geese flying noisily in and out of the tidal gut, gray squirrels rummaging more loudly in the leaves below.
In the woodline there was a faint rustling among the darkening shadows. More squirrels, or the shadowy 12-pointer about to make its break toward the cover of tall grass?
It didn't matter a bit, really. Shooting time had passed, and as Downs said as the 4X4 trundled down the farm lane in the darkness, "Some days you hunt, and some days you harvest -- and no one really knows which day is going to be which."