Maine Guide bio

Maine guide service

A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

David Woodbury has two and a half centuries of ancestral roots in Franklin County, in the Sweet and Porter families. He also shares ancestry with Aaron Woodbury, who, in the 1820s, was the first settler in what would become Lincoln, Maine in Penobscot County.

Also descended directly from True Woodbury, Jr., of Litchfield, Maine, (location of Woodbury Pond), David's great-grandfather was George H. Woodbury, (great-grandson of True, Jr.), who ran the fish hatchery at Belgrade Lake in the early decades of the 1900s.

After he spent much of his youth in Ohio with regular trips to Porter Lake in New Vineyard, Maine, David's parents moved the family back to Maine, where he graduated from Farmington High School. Following a year in a classical music conservatory where Russian was an elective, David joined the Army, took the Defense Department's intensive, one-year Russian course in Monterey, California, and served in Germany as a Russian language cryptanalyst in the Army Security Agency in the Vietnam era.

After returning to college with the intention to study languages, David instead completed a bachelor's degree in Wildlife Management, University of Maine 1977, with a minor in Russian.

Hired at Great Northern Paper Company in Millinocket, Maine as a laborer in the spring of 1977, David began a papermaker apprenticeship before joining management as a production coordinator. Within a few years, the human resources field became his career specialty. In 2000, after 23 years at GNP, he became the Executive Director of HR at Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln, Maine, where the family now lives.

David and his wife of over 30 years, Beth, along with their children of various sources, have hiked, camped, boated, fished, hunted, and generally explored the north woods of Maine until it became obvious that guiding was a logical way to help others enjoy the region in much the same way.

He collects Maine fossils, insects, and wildlife skeletons, has practiced tracking numerous species, has successfully transplanted wildflowers and trees, and has photographed and/or observed in the wild (in Maine) pileated woodpeckers, other scarce woodpeckers, bald eagles, eastern panthers, bobcats, river otters, bear cub triplets, fishers, mink, weasels, and spruce grouse, as well as the usual raccoons, moose, coyotes, beaver, deer, foxes, turkeys, partridge, all manner of ducks and other waterfowl, and much more.

He is interested in sharing with others the opportunity to enjoy the same treasures of the Maine wilderness.

As a Registered Maine Guide for fishing, hunting, and recreation, (the most rigorous guide licensing process in the nation), David is also a licensed commercial boat operator, certified in infant-child-adult CPR and wilderness first aid, has expert skills with map and compass and with GPS, and is reliably familiar with the woods and waters, flora and fauna, landowners and rules, and the beauty and hazards of Maine's wilderness resources.

In addition to an avocation as a naturalist and a full-time career in health care administration and being immersed in numerous hobbies from model railroading to html, David and Beth have been treatment foster parents for a decade and are an area resource on developmental disabilities and the legal system. In addition, David is an author and publisher, with his opinions offered here and his books offered elsewhere at DamnYankee.com.

In the realm of wilderness guiding, there is a good chance that he shares an area of interest with virtually anyone else who comes along.

A WORD ABOUT INSPIRATION

As a youth, I spent a few years as a Cub Scout and as a Boy Scout and also took part in a number of YMCA programs - all of which paid particular reverence to our nation's Indian, or aboriginal, heritage.

Taught before the modern descendents of aboriginal Indians were presumed to all share certain political leanings, which they do not, and before their legacy, legends, and legions were co-opted by certain self-righteous non-Indians as instruments to insult other non-Indians, appreciation for the Indians was called Indian lore or Indian skills.

As it was conveyed in the innocence of the 1950s and 1960s, I loved it. I learned to admire the Indians' understanding of animal behavior, their stealth in hunting, their ingenuity with natural things and the artistry of their handicrafts, as well as their varied cultures and their conservation ethic.

Whenever I am exploring the wild and exposed to its whims with only my wits and experience (and my GPS, PFD, CPR, etc.), nevertheless I do still think of the hundreds of generations of hardy humans who led the way where I now respectfully pass.

David A. Woodbury

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