WILTON -- As they say in Grand Lake Stream, he's just living the dream.

There was no life-altering moment, no soul-searching discovery that opened it all up as easily as the pages in a well-worn book, telling Paul Laney that he would make his living as a Maine guide. But at 32 years old, Laney finds himself following his calling and doing just that.

For bobcat, bear or lake trout, the Gardiner native is your man, and as the show coordinator for the Maine Professional Guides Association, he's putting his best foot forward this weekend at the 4th annual Pine Tree State Sportsman and Gun Show. The show, featuring dozens upon dozens of exhibits and seminars, runs through Sunday.

"I grew up hunting and fishing with my father, as soon as I was old enough to do it," Laney said. "At some point I just decided that I wanted to make a living doing it. ... I'm pretty happy everyday I'm able to go out and do it and able to make a living at it.

"Everything I've ever done, I've just put my mind to it and I've done it. That's the way my mentality is -- I just go out and do things right."

It began with the one thing Laney really enjoyed doing in his free time, hunting for bobcats with his own hounds. From there it grew into a business, one that has yielded a bobcat for each and every hunter he's guided during the better part of a decade now.

"It kind of started with that. That's where my real passion was," Laney said of bobcat hunting. "That's what I wanted to do, and it's still what I do in the winter."

Of course now he gets paid to do it, enough so he can call it a career.

That's not an easy task in and of itself, as the hundreds of registered guides across the state will confirm.

Most guides in Maine are only able to lead hunting, fishing or recreational endeavors on a part-time basis.

Laney has made guiding his sole pursuit, with the ultimate goal of opening his own lodge someday in Grand Lake Stream.

"It's been a long road from that point of wanting to do this to getting to where I am now," he said.

Eight years ago, Laney took his first guiding job, hopping on as a bear guide at Sunrise Ridge in Bingham -- but even as he busied himself in the summer setting up bait sites and tree stands for Sunrise Ridge, there was no guarantee he would stick as a guide.

The outfitter hired him before he'd even passed the state's guide exam.

"I remember I was baiting for them, and I only passed the guide's test a few days before the season opened," Laney said.

"There was a lot of pressure. I remember them telling me, 'You better pass that test, because the hunters are coming and you're taking them out.' "

Two years later, in 2002, Laney took his first steps toward legitimizing his career aspirations. After making barely $6,000 as a guide that first year -- not even enough to live on -- he hooked up with Dave Tobey as a bear guide and then with Dale Wheaton of Wheaton's Lodge, a renown fishing lodge in Forest City, near Grand Lake Stream.

That first summer at Wheaton's, Laney recalls, he barely stopped to take a breath, and it's been that way ever since.

"That first summer I guided 65 days, and then I did four weeks of bear hunting for (Tobey)," said Laney, who guided 80 days for Wheaton last summer. "You can figure out how many days I went.

"From the time the ice goes out in April, I'm either guiding everyday or doing something that relates to my guiding business until the time the bobcat season ends in February," Laney said.

Laney began cementing his mark on Grand Lake Stream when he bought out Tobey's bear-hunting business.

He now takes out more than 40 hunters each season, an average of nearly a dozen hunters per week, as he works more than 50 bait sites and tree stands on his own.

Now his hunting and fishing operation relies on roughly 80 percent return business, almost all of which, he said, comes from out of state.

Despite changes to the local economy, thanks to skyrocketing gasoline costs and shrinking expendable income everywhere, Laney thinks the guiding business can remain viable.

"That's the thing about Grand Lake Stream," Laney said. "We have the fish, we have the birds. We have all the things I think that we'll never lose there. Guiding is what Grand Lake Stream was built on."

Laney recently became engaged to longtime girlfriend Marie Gilman, and Gilman is expected to take the guide's test herself this summer. Not only will it allow them more time to pursue common interests together, but Gilman's guiding career will help Laney's Guide Service expand with an eye toward the ultimate goal.

Their own lodge.

For a couple that met when they were both working at the same rustic Maine lodge -- he as a guide and she as a waitress -- it's obvious.

They're just living the dream.

Travis Barrett -- 621-5648

tbarrett@centralmaine.com