DULUTH, Minn. _ Before dawn on a September school day, Andy Ellerman slips out of the house. He wears blue jeans and a camouflage jacket. His yellow Lab, Trooper, dances at his side.
Ellerman, 16, is headed for a goose blind in a nearby Lakewood Township hayfield. It won't be a long commute _ just a five-minute walk.
A sophomore at Duluth East High School, Ellerman makes this commute two or three mornings a week. He hunts geese in the morning, hustles back home and gets ready to catch the school bus. Geometry class starts at 9, but if Ellerman's luck is good, he has already calculated the angle of approach on a flock or two of incoming Canada geese.
He has shot several geese this fall, including a limit of three on a recent morning.
"I called in my first goose at 12," says Ellerman, a confident, soft-spoken young man. "I shot one and called the rest of the flock back in."
Shortly after 6 a.m., he pulls a few goose decoys from his portable blind in the hayfield. With Trooper bouncing along, he places the decoys in two pods. Light mist falls in the still-black morning. Ellerman works quickly, without a headlamp, until he has about 15 decoys near his blind. They resemble resting Canada geese and look good on the green grass.
Ellerman and Trooper, all 80 pounds of him, take their places in the blind, which is built to look like one more bale in the hayfield. In the grudging daylight, one can just make out a few hay bales, an apple tree and a small pond. Ellerman pulls his rack of goose and duck calls from his pack and slings them around his neck.
He's ready. Trooper whines with anticipation. Together, they await the legal shooting hour _ a half-hour before sunrise.
