Into the woods | For Maine's sporting camps to survive, it'll take a willingness to change with the times

In 2004, Eric Stirling went to Bangor Savings Bank to get a loan to buy West Branch Pond Camps, a campus of rustic cabins on a remote pond near Greenville. But unlike many loan seekers, Stirling did his homework. He'd drawn up a business plan, figuring how many campers he'd need to bring in to fill his eight cabins during a season, how much his overhead would cost, how long before he'd be in the black.

The bank certainly couldn't argue about the property. Set alongside a mitten-shaped basin on the West Branch of the Pleasant River, West Branch Pond Camps have a fine view of Hedgehog Mountain, are surrounded by woodlands, and have been attracting hunters, fishermen and families for generations. There's a note written on a wall in one cabin that shows guests G.K. Smith and Henry Smith stayed here in July of 1895 and caught more than 368 fish. West Branch Pond Camps have history. They have a hardscrabble charm. And they have fish.

"A sporting camp is a pretty typical Maine small business," says Stirling, "with seasonal employees and buildings you have to maintain. But it was moderately difficult to get a loan. I was young ˆ— I think I was 28 or 29 ˆ— and I didn't have a huge amount of experience."
Stirling was lucky. He got the $275,000 loan to purchase the 30 acres he'd been leasing from Plum Creek, the controversial Seattle-based timber company-cum-real-estate developer. (Stirling says the cabins on the land at that point were "worth virtually nothing" because they were on property he didn't own.) In one swoop he was able to solve the bugaboo that has been problem number one for many sporting camp owners ˆ— ownership of the land. Businesses like Stirling's have traditionally leased their land from huge multinational paper companies. With the paper industry in turmoil and mills ˆ— and vast tracts of woodlands ˆ— being sold like so many Monopoly pieces in the past decade, leasing has meant a great many nervous moments for camp owners.

And that's just one of the many challenges the sporting camp industry faces. Running a camp is fraught with uncertainties like the ownership question. Hunting and fishing, the pursuits that put the "sport" in sporting camps, have been in slow decline in Maine for the past 50 years, much like the paper industry. Among those people who are using the outdoors, demographics are changing in a profound way. Numbers are down almost across the board when it comes to camping, as fewer people are unwilling to unplug from their connected lifestyles.

Eric Stirling knew all this, and running a camp is still what he wanted to be doing. He knew the sporting camp industry better than just about anyone could coming in ˆ— he grew up at West Branch Pond Camps, which has been in his family since 1910. He was home-schooled right there, and had fond memories of boyhood, roaming the woods here with his brothers, hunting, fishing, and being introduced to the big world outside through an international coterie of guests. Stirling went to Bates College in Lewiston and studied economics, mostly because he wanted to understand the market forces driving the changes he saw around him in the woods.

Stirling is in a better position than many because he now owns his land. Four years in, he says the camp is "very much" profitable, and that despite certain challenges ˆ— from shifting visitor demographics to changing habits ˆ— he sees a rosy future for West Branch Pond Camps. But the future isn't so assured for all of the sporting camps that dot Maine's rugged interior. The difficulties they face will require them to adapt to survive, but they have to be willing ˆ— like Stirling ˆ— and able to do so.

The convenience factor
The Maine sporting camp industry dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, a time when the affluent upper crust of Boston and New York and Philadelphia society would travel north with a rifle and a month or two worth of fishing gear in tow. According to Alice Arlen's 2003 book, Maine Sporting Camps, there were more than 300 such places in 1904, usually located in the western mountains and the North Woods. They thrived until World War II, when much of their market shipped out and when most people couldn't ˆ— or wouldn't ˆ— take a month-long vacation.

Numbers have been in a constant slide since then, with hundreds of camps closing because they could no longer make a go of it or because the next generation didn't want to run their parents' camps. Many burned, some were done in when the land they were leasing changed hands, many were purchased and privatized, and some have simply changed hands every six or seven years.

"We average about 52-58 members these days," says Gene Thompson. Thompson owns Frost Pond Camps, a seven-camp facility south of Baxter State Park, and is the secretary of the Maine Sporting Camp Association. (He also was president as recently as 2006.) Thompson estimates there are another sixty or so camps in the state that are not members of his trade group. As of 2005, according to Thompson, member camps were bringing in about 100,000 people and generating about $8 million in revenues. "That's what we're drawing in that goes directly to sporting camps," he says. "That doesn't include fees to guides, people stopping for meals and gas on their way to camp, stopping at L.L.Bean because they need to have all the new gear."

The state has recognized the economic importance of these rustic retreats and the wallet-toting tourists they attract. In 2002, the Legislature passed a resolution recognizing sporting camps and their "historical contribution to the cultural heritage of Maine."
But tourists are finding their way to Frost Pond in fewer number than they once were, according to Thompson. Baxter State Park has seen a downturn in its number of visitors ˆ— down by more than 25% in the past five years ˆ— and Thompson has experienced the same trend.

It's a nationwide shift away from roughing it: Overall outdoor recreation remains popular but fewer people are willing to actually touch the stuff, to get dirty and sleep on the ground. They want to go rafting, hiking and kayaking but then they want to lay their heads someplace with electricity and have a beer at the bar.

The National Park Service saw a 12% decline in camping between 1999 and 2004, and a 15% tumble at Acadia National Park during that time. At Maine's state parks there was a six percent decline through 2004. Camping on the Allagash was down 22% and in the North Maine Woods ˆ— 3.5 million acres of timberland where camping is allowed ˆ— overnight stays were down almost 18%.

Thompson says sporting camps can actually benefit from these changes, but it's the big guys ˆ— what he calls the high-end camps ˆ— that are doing so. "I have seven camps but only one with indoor plumbing and no electricity," he notes. "If I had the resources to completely revamp and put indoor plumbing in all my camps then I suspect my numbers would rise. Whether or not they would rise significantly, I'm not sure."

A change in scenery
Sporting camp owners, says Thompson, face many of the same issues other small businesses in Maine do. An informal poll of his members included major concerns such as fuel costs, taxes, state requirements, insurance, staffing, maintenance, advertising and logistics due to remoteness.

But camp owners also have been moving in different directions when it comes to how their camps are run. Gerry Whiting, who manages the Appalachian Mountain Club's new sporting camp ventures in Maine, says the industry is somewhat polarized into two kinds of camps: full-service, high-end camps and low-end camps where guests may not have running water or indoor plumbing. "Between these two camps there's not a lot," he says.

To make up for the loss of hunting and fishing, or even to augment what hunting and fishing there is, some camps have been attempting to lure wildlife watchers, nature lovers and families. Bradford Camps on Munsungan Lake, north of Baxter State Park, is such a place. Run by Igor and Karen Sikorsky, the camps have a steady and loyal clientele.
Like other camps, the Sikorskys have encouraged families and nature watchers to come to Bradford, but it is still predominantly a hunting and fishing operation. "Right now I'd say our business is about a third families and two-thirds hunting and fishing," Igor says. A Dartmouth grad who grew up spending part of summer at Cobb's Pierce Pond Camps on Pierce Pond, northwest of Bingham, he sees the transition from sport to nature watchers and back as symbiotic.

"The period from the middle of July through August is not a time for hunting and fishing in Maine because hunting is out of season and we have a coldwater fishery," he says. "It's not like hunting and fishing are getting displaced by families ˆ— they've just allowed us to broaden our offering."
At West Branch Pond Camps, Eric Stirling relies less and less on the sports of the past and is "largely non-motorized." "I'd say 30% of my total business is the sporting crowd," he says. "The trend is toward wildlife watching." To that end, he's partnered with his neighbor, the Appalachian Mountain Club, which owns two camps next to West Branch Pond Camps, to offer camp-to-camp hiking, mountain biking, cross-country skiing and even dogsledding. (For more on the AMC's foray into Maine sporting camps, see "Trail mix" on page 25.) And Stirling expects to clear some birdwatching trails as the next step for the camps. "I bet there isn't a sporting camp in the state that wouldn't do well with birding trails," he says.

"A labor of love"
Even if you have a steady customer base, there's always the question of ownership. Like Eric Stirling, Matt Libby three years ago bought the land under Libby Camps, the 510-acre camp he runs in Ashland. It was a complex arrangement involving Irving, the St. John, N.B.-based company that previously owned the land, and Timber Star, a woodland-management company that bought the property from Irving three weeks before turning around and selling it to Libby. "It was an unusual arrangement," says Libby, "but the price was fair."

Libby bought the land for $500,000, not including the buildings, which he already owned. And last winter he purchased Libby Island, a small isle just offshore in Millinocket Lake that was the original site of the camps when they were founded in 1890.

Libby says that with this flurry of activity there has been some "growing pains," not the least of which is a large debt in the form of a mortgage. "That was a big deal for us," he says. "I'd never taken out a loan more than $50,000, never mind $500,000. But I used to put a lot of money in the ground here and always thought, 'What if they got rid of the land?'"

Today, Libby says he's making money, but that he pumps a lot of it right back into his business. He hosted about 600 guests last year, up five percent from the previous year, and charges $150 and up for a camp, including meals. Bradford sees more than 220 guests a year, up from about 190 a decade ago. The numbers are kept differently at West Branch Pond Camps, which reports 1,500 camper nights. Rates there are about $90 a night, and Stirling says he had a "bumper year" last season.

And even though business is looking less prosperous at Frost Pond Camps, Gene Thompson thinks it will turn around, and that the guests eventually will come back. "At some point they'll realize they've seen all the TV shows and that they miss going to the woods and relaxing," he says. "That's my individual opinion and not the [Maine Sporting Camp] Association's. Sporting camps have over 150 years of tradition. People don't want to give that up too easily."

Thompson says that in his recently conducted informal poll of Maine Sporting Camp Association members the majority say that despite all the uncertainties, it's a good time to be a sporting camp owner ˆ— but only if you don't plan on scooping up money like smelts in a net. "This business is no way to make any serious money," Thompson says. "It's a lifestyle. You're not going to get rich doing it. It's a labor of love."