Buddha at the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art.

CONSIDER yourself a savvy regular visitor to the city, but plagued with guilt about that utterly unknown land mass off the southern tip of Manhattan? Perhaps you've even been there and made a brief toe touch at the ferry terminal before turning around and coming back, or taken the drive-through on I-278 on your way from the Goethals Bridge to the Verrazano-Narrows. Much as you might have been wowed by the accurately painted lane dividers, you know that doesn't count as tourism.

Take a load off your mind: you're no worse than many local Manhattan- and Brooklyn-centrists, who have barely even been to the Bronx (Yankee Stadium doesn't count) or Queens (the United States Open doesn't count), let alone Staten Island.

But it's well worth a visit. Staten Island specializes in the same things the city specializes in: culture and food. The Snug Harbor Cultural Center is its crown jewel. originally an 18th-century home for “aged, decrepit and worn-out sailors,” it now houses the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, the Staten Island Children's Museum and the Staten Island Botanical Garden, where November is orchid and chrysanthemum month, and every month is New York Chinese Scholars Garden month. Just reading the names of the parts of the garden, which was designed and mostly prefabricated in China, is soothing: Wandering-in-Bamboo Courtyard, Moon Embracing Pool, Gurgling Rock Bridge.

Farther south on the island, and continuing the Asian theme, one of the most surprising museums in New York has to be the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art. (The first surprise: Jacques Marchais was an American woman, not a French man.) Housed in a building Ms. Marchais herself designed and modeled after a Himalayan mountain monastery, the museum claims to have America's only Bhutanese sand mandala — the multicolored sand design meant to represent the dwelling place of a deity. Also of interest are the intricate designs of the incense burners, the figures of deities and a few items made in part from human bones, like the odd skull bowl.

Historic Richmond Town is a re-creation of the 19th-century county seat of Staten Island, much of it housed in original buildings restored with period furniture and tools. Highlights include the Voorlezer's House, a cramped 17th-century building that until 1701 was a Dutch Reformed church and school. (Alas, not many former students showed up for the 300th reunion.) Probably the coolest building is the re-creation of a 19th-century general store — in its original building — “the Kmart or Target of its day,” as the tour guides will tell you. Yeah, but if you think you'll find such a selection of kerosene oil and gunpowder in Kmart, good luck.

Staten Island does not kid around with food, either: it even has its own Zagat survey. (O.K., it's free, it's sponsored by the city, and it runs only 23 pages of which 2 are restaurants, but still.) On a first trip, only the lactose and gluten intolerant are permitted to skip Denino's, which ranks up there with the most celebrated pizza places in the city. It would look like an ordinary suburban pizzeria if it weren't for the dozens of articles posted exalting their thin-crust pizza using every pizza-appropriate adjective under the sun. To summarize: it's good.

But there are other places to explore as well. Down Port Richmond Avenue from Denino's is a slew of genuine Mexican restaurants, like the popular Tacos La Abuelita. Bay Street has an old-fashioned luncheonette, the creatively named Bay Street Luncheonette. Aside from a great egg cream (in chocolate, vanilla or black and white), they've got your standard club sandwiches and grilled cheese and burgers, all cheap. But the best part is that it's a retro place that doesn't need to try to be retro. On an old-fashioned main street like Bay Street, it fits right in.

Finally, a dessert or gift idea: near Historic Richmond Town and the Tibetan Museum (if you're driving) is Andrew & Alan's Bakery and Chocolate Factory. There are two entrances, equally dangerous to any diet. The one on the left leads to the chocolate section: if there were ever to be a reality show called “American's Next Top Dipper of Pretzels in Chocolate,” these folks would win. The other side has their takes on the classics: a chocolate babka with melted chocolate baked in, black-and-white cookies, a banana coffee crumb cake.

Staying for the evening is a bold move, considering the options that await you on the other side of the ferry, but Bay Street and neighboring Van Duzer Street are where bars and nightspots are concentrated. The quirkiest is Cargo Cafe, which gets a kooky makeover a few times a year. The current design makes the place hard to miss: look for the man-eating parakeet painted on the outside. If you are too frightened to go in and try their selection of microbrews, no problem: it's a short, parakeet-free walk back to the ferry.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Snug Harbor Cultural Center, 1,000 Richmond Terrace; www.snug-harbor.org.

Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, (718) 425-3560; www.newhousecenter.org.

Staten Island Children's Museum, (718) 273-2060; www.statenislandkids.org.

Staten Island Botanical Garden, (718) 273-8200; www.sibg.org.

Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, 338 Lighthouse Avenue; (718) 987-3500; www.tibetanmuseum.org.

Historic Richmond Town, 441 Clarke Avenue, (718) 351-1611; www.historicrichmondtown.org.

Denino's Pizzeria, 524 Port Richmond Avenue; (718) 442-9401.

Tacos La Abuelita, 229 Port Richmond Avenue; (718) 273-4648.

Bay Street Luncheonette, 1189 Bay Street; (718) 720-0922.

Andrew & Alan's Bakery and Chocolate Factory; 61-63 New Dorp Plaza, (718) 667-9696; www.andrewandalansbakery.com.

Cargo Cafe, 120 Bay Street, (718) 876-0539.

But in rural Maine on the opening day of deer season — an event anticipated like a national holiday in some parts of the country — it is obvious that the gap separating hunters and nonhunters isn’t necessarily about guns, or even animals. In places like Jackman, it has more to do with the growing distance between those who live in America’s concrete communities and the dwindling population whose lives, and livelihoods, are more closely tied to the woods.

Jackman is one of those small towns where life revolves around deer hunting every autumn. Although bow-hunting season began in September, opening day for firearms, Oct. 27, is the big date on the calendar.

“For Maine residents, deer hunting is something they look forward to for the whole year,” said Paul Jacques, deputy commissioner of the state’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. “For the next month, the first thing you say when you see someone in a restaurant is, ‘How you doin’ — did you get your deer yet?’”

Jackman is about 160 miles northwest of Portland and 16 miles southeast of the Canadian border. It has a population of about 700, a couple of gas stations, a general store and a few bars and restaurants, the kind where a waitress greets you by name when you walk in, or conversation stops and heads turn to survey the stranger in town.

The local economy relies mostly on timber and tourism, which cycles seasonally through snowmobiling, whitewater rafting, fishing and hunting. But for many businesses, it’s hunting season that keeps them afloat.

“We have a fair business the rest of the year — we get by,” said Travis Rogers, manager of Bait, Bolts & Bullets in Solon. “But this is when we make our money.”

Attending to a steady stream of customers picking up bullets and buck lure the afternoon before opening day, Mr. Rogers estimated that 60 percent of the store’s sales came during the fall hunting season, from September to early December, including the dates allocated to various weapons and prey.

But from a biological perspective, deer season is timed to “the rut”: when does are in heat and bucks run around chasing them — generally in November, but each state manages its deer population by regulating the length of the hunting season and how many permits are issued to shoot a doe (which are separate from general hunting licenses).

To capitalize on this mating ritual, hunting stores are filled with products like “rattling bags,” which mimic the sound of deer antlers knocking as two bucks spar over a doe, and deer calls with names like Bleat-in-Heat. Mr. Rogers was also selling T-shirts with slogans like “Vegetarian — an Old Indian Word for Poor Hunter” and a selection of blaze orange hats and vests.

Many out-of-towners come to Maine for the state’s big-antlered bucks, and there are sporting camps and lodges that offer services to help them get a deer.

One of those lodges is Northern Outdoors in The Forks, a hamlet where the Kennebec and the Dead Rivers meet, about 30 miles south of Jackman. Founded as a whitewater rafting company in 1975, it has since branched out to offer hunting and fishing packages, mostly to create business year-round.

“For this part of the state of Maine, there would be no business without hunting,” said Russell Walters, the company’s president, who was busy getting ready for the season’s first wave of guests. Those guests typically come for a week and get more than a little help from guides like Dan Davis, who was sporting a coonskin cap made from an animal he had trapped himself.

He had spent the previous few weeks scouting for deer, setting up tree stands, cutting shooting lanes and marking paths to the stands with ribbon. When asked if his efforts made hunting too easy for guests, he smiled and said diplomatically, “With all the tricks we’ve got today, it shouldn’t be hard for anyone to get a deer.”

Even so, he estimated that only 1 in 10 guests kills a deer — roughly the same percentage of licensed hunters who get a deer statewide. About 30,000 deer are killed by hunters in Maine each year, compared with more than 500,000 in Wisconsin, generally the biggest deer-hunting state. Those numbers may seem high, but state wildlife managers say hunters are critical to keeping deer herds in check.

“Without management, the deer population would get out of control,” said Matt Frank, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. He explained that an uncontrolled population could lead to overbrowsed vegetation, increased road accidents and empty bellies. “You don’t want to have the population get so large that the deer starve,” he said.

 One of the biggest concerns for wildlife management agencies is that younger generations aren’t as interested in hunting, which is why many states are experimenting with youth hunting days and programs to get teenagers away from their computers and into the woods.

“It’s getting so that there are just people our age and older who are hunting,” said Ray Levesque, owner of Bishop’s General Store in Jackman. “We need to get the kids involved.” He rousted his two sons, ages 10 (the legal hunting age in Maine) and 13, before dawn on opening day to go hunting — without complaint from them, he said.

Besides selling gas, sandwiches, soda and supplies, Bishop’s operates as an official tagging station for the area, which means it is one of the places hunters bring their deer to be documented and weighed, information that gets passed on to the state.

Hunting, it turns out, is highly regulated, with rules governing everything from what shade of orange hunters must wear to what time they can start shooting (typically, half an hour before sunrise).

But opening day in Jackman was dark and rainy, so there wasn’t much movement in town before dawn. Donavan Nadeau, a local painter, was one of the few people out early, gassing up his truck in camouflage pants, a matching jacket and orange cap, undeterred by the pouring rain.

“A day like this is pretty good because it’s quiet and you can get up behind them,” he said, gamely answering questions about the biggest buck he’d shot (a 200-pound eight-pointer) and how he chose where to hunt (“It’s a guessing game more than anything — a lot of it is luck”).

He described the signs hunters look for: where bucks paw the ground or rub their antlers against trees, the droppings and tracks.

“That’s what’s exciting about hunting,” he said, grinning and eager to be on his way. “It’s amazing if you pay attention to detail.”

DRIVING down a muddy back road with a photographer a bit later, I got a reception that wasn’t quite as friendly. Spotting a bearded man in a bright orange jacket and hat heading into the woods with a gun, we rolled down the window and asked, “How you doin’?”

“Just fine if you keep going,” he answered — which we did.

The next stop was Jackman Java, a cafe back in town owned by Gail Stevenson, who grew up on Long Island and lived in California before seeking a fresh start in Jackman in 2004. (While visiting an uncle, she asked God for a sign about what to do with her life after a divorce and saw the store for sale.)

Inside, espresso drinks listed on the menu suggested a city background, but Ms. Stevenson was also embracing country life: she said she was going deer hunting herself that afternoon for the first time.

“I figured when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and everybody around here hunts,” she said, excusing herself to check on the muffins baking in the oven and to fetch a photo of herself holding a grouse she had shot.

She wasn’t the only female resident of Jackman who went hunting that day. Nancy Jackson, a petite woman with gray hair, was one of the first people to bring a deer in to Bishop’s, followed shortly by Skip Parlin, the gruff hunter we’d met in the woods.

After a wary introduction, he warmed up and showed me how to hold a rifle and aim through the scope, even apologizing for his earlier greeting before driving away with his wife. They were going back out so she could keep trying for her own deer.

In all, 15 deer were brought into Bishop’s on opening day, including a doe Ms. Stevenson shot within 20 minutes of heading into the woods, according to gossip I heard at a local restaurant that night.

“It was eight minutes,” she told me the next morning, insisting I follow her across the street to see her deer hanging in a neighbor’s garage. “I had so much fun, you cannot believe the adrenaline rush.”

When asked if she had any reservations about actually pulling the trigger, she didn’t hesitate before answering, “It’s a beautiful animal, but it’s just part of the food chain — and I’m trying to be very cost-effective in my life.”

The butcher was coming by in a few hours, and like most of the residents of Jackman, Ms. Stevenson would fill her freezer with deer meat. In the meantime, she had apple muffins in the oven and a grouse to cook, which she’d also shot the previous day.

“It was the best day hunting I ever had,” she said.