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The wind picked up late in the week, and the temperature fell to more familiar fall levels. Football was in the air, and leaves were beginning to scatter underfoot. In the time-honored tradition of the South, that can mean only one thing to a nation of boys grown old.

Squirrel hunting.

Monday is opening day for a rite of passage handed down from grandfather to grandson for hundreds of years in this state and those across the South. When the leaves begin to fall, the critters begin to scurry from branch to branch and something stirs deep in the soul. The pull of youth is strong. We're carried back to the dirt-road days of childhood, when the greatest thing on earth was the quiet before the click of the safety and the shaking barrel of a .22 aimed high into the trees.

Here in the 21st century, as dirt roads disappear and squirrels adapt to asphalt neighborhoods and downtown fast food, the autumn breeze seems more poignant than ever. The scent is not of old boots and gunpowder, but of a fading pastime. The most American of all sports is slowly dwindling.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the number of hunters nationwide has dropped 24 percent from about 50 million 20 years ago to about 38 million in 2006. In North Carolina, the number of licensed hunters fell 47 percent from 1976 to 2006 (from 574,547 to 305,303).

The reasons are many, and the trend has been steady for some time, but it's not as dramatic as some would have you believe. Hunters aren't becoming an endangered species, and the importance of hunting and hunters will never disappear. Nor will it be fully understood by the element of a changing population that sees hunting as some sort of barbaric practice handed down from the cavemen.

"Some people just don't want to understand it," says Eddie Bridges, a local conservationist who helped create the N.C. Wildlife Endowment Fund.

While two major studies recently reported a drop in the number of hunting licenses sold nationwide, similar studies have found that almost all outdoors activities are declining. Golf, tennis and even fishing numbers are in decline, according to the Fish and Wildlife report.

But it is hunting that polarizes and hunting that energizes the masses. The hot-button issue is so controversial to so many people, it's hard to even have a discussion about it. Recently, rifts between hunters and the National Rifle Association have surfaced. Politicians continue to cozy up to hunters, despite the declining numbers. Even the Humane Society, which points to the increasing numbers of birdwatchers and wildlife photographers as evidence of shifting trends, is on record supporting hunters under certain circumstances.

The truth is, we need hunting and we need hunters. And to ensure the survival of a privilege handed down from our forefathers, and to continue the important task of game management, the pastime must be handed down from one generation to the next.

"It's just as important now as it was 50 years ago," says Greg Johns, an avid hunter from Greensboro. "I think it's more important. The hunters are the true conservationists now.

"When I got out of the service and came here in 1972, there were no deer in Guilford County. There were no turkeys. Look at the numbers now. That's all happened through conservation."

There was a time when the most cherished of heirlooms was a gun. There was a time when the most important of traditions was explaining to a youngster his role in the grand scheme of things. It had to do with hunting, and it still does.

Writer and conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote of the peculiar solemnity of the hunter.

"He has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct," Leopold wrote in 1940. "Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience rather than a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact."

The mob is closing in, however. As we continue to move from the farms to the cities, our hunting land is disappearing. As private land vanishes and game lands are constricted by roads and construction, the sportsman is losing his habitat just as the animals are losing theirs. And despite the argument for natural management of species, the fact remains that the best way to maintain safe, healthy herds is to thin them by hunting.

The hunter has a role bequeathed to him as a citizen of the United States. The animals hunted today are the offspring of species hunted centuries ago, species that were saved from commercial slaughter for commerce. This is the message passed from generation to generation.

The thrill is not the kill but the hunt. The responsibility is to hunt within the laws, also passed down from those who hunted before us.

"I grew up in the country, but I can remember coming home from school, changing clothes and going out and getting a pheasant and having it dressed before Daddy came home," Johns says. "Things are different now. Once you get older, it's not about the killing but just getting outdoors, spending the days with your kids, your friends, your family. We've become so domesticated."

As any young squirrel hunter can tell you, without management of the population, squirrels will eventually outgrow their habitat and grow beyond their food supply. We don't want to see what happens next. A city overrun by wild animals is no place for humans.

"The hunter is an active participant in the management of game," says Brad Gunn, the supervisor of the Hunter Heritage program for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. "The best example is the deer herd. If not for hunting, we would have another 200,000 deer."

That's 200,000 deer -- and 11,706 wild turkeys, 1,800 black bears and 142 wild boars -- from 2006 alone. That's a lot more animals in the garden, wandering through the neighborhoods of Greensboro, dying on the highways of North Carolina and spreading disease throughout other species, including humans.

The argument people don't understand is that much, if not all, conservation efforts come from the money garnered through hunting licenses. Gunn says though the sale of licenses has fallen nationwide, it remains relatively flat in North Carolina.

"We figure that for every hunter we're losing, we're replacing at a rate of 0.76," Gunn says. "That's over the course of the last couple of years. We're staying relatively the same now, at least for the last four years."

Plus, the money generated from the lifetime hunting license, which Bridges introduced in 1981, is now more than $103 million.

"That's a lot of money," Bridges says. "That's a lot of good being done by hunters, even if they aren't hunting anymore. The kids who are getting these license when they are born have their whole life to hunt or not, but the money is going to worthwhile causes every day."

On Monday, a lot of kids grown old will think back to the days when they'd head out with their buddies and creep through the woods looking for critters in the trees. Opening day of squirrel season isn't what it once was, here or anywhere else. But the lessons learned from those first hunting trips last a lifetime.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ehardin@news-record.com