Mae was born to a human father and a Faunus mother (who is also a hawk Faunus) in a small cottage deep in the forest near Kuchinashi. Mae's mother worked as a huntress, taking job requests from the local town and protecting any merchants passing through. Mae's father worked as a trapper, and fur trader, selling what pelts he had skinned to the general store in town, while also keeping the meat he had acquired. Mae--who was home schooled for most of her life--was taught how to hunt and defend herself from a very young age by her mother and father, who let her tag along when they were hunting smaller Ursas, Boarbatusks, and Beowolfs who had strayed too far from their pack. Around the time Mae built her weapon--albeit a prototype version of it--her parents let her go out hunting for small animals and Grimm. She would spend hours wandering the forest and admiring the beauty of nature, although she would tend to get lost and into trouble while doing this.
Time went on in the forest. Mae got older and was helping her father hunt on a regular basis for big game, and big Grimm. Mae's mother continued to go on missions for the local town, but because of her age, she couldn't complete as many contracts as she used to. To offset this, Mae decided to look for a job as an assistant to a blacksmith. When she looked at the board, there were no openings for such a position, but she did find an offering for an engineer's assistant. Desperate for work, she walked to the engineer's house to check in as their new assistant. When she knocked on the door, she expected an old, cranky old man. She was surprised to see a middle aged man--somewhere in his forties--open the door. He wore glasses, a button-up shirt, pants, and sandals. He was kind and welcoming, if not a little snobbish. He introduced himself as Bashir Cooper, a retired Atlas engineer that wanted a quiet life near the great rural areas of Mistral. Bashir wanted to pursue his dream of being a custom weapon designer, and to do that, he needed someone to help him test his new inventions--which of course were prototypes and very unstable, possibly life threatening. Mae agreed to test the weapons, but only on the sole condition that Bashir would help gear her up for her journey towards being a huntress.
Once Mae turned 18 and became eligible to attend a Huntsman Academy, it became apparent that her lack of formal education or combat training would severely hinder her chances of getting into her dream school of Beacon Academy. Realizing this, Mae signed up for a continuation program at Haven Academy and stayed there for a year honing her latent intellect and combat prowess. The curriculum was accelerated and the training was body numbing, but Mae managed to make it through the school year in a great state of both body, and mind. When Mae came home, she turned her walks/hunts in the forest into to full-on exercise sessions, jumping from tree to tree, and hunting prey that grazed many miles away from her home. When Mae wasn't training, she was studying at Bashir's workshop in the village and testing new weapons and equipment. When the time came to apply for Beacon, Mae was accepted right away, and within 3 months was saying goodbye to her family, friends, and Bashir--who she hugged a lot longer than anybody there--and boarded an airship to Beacon.