The Big Dipper is tipped on its end and the dew in the meadow grass refreshingly cool to the touch as we begin strategically planting a spread of about 100 Canada geese decoys.

Three young teens move among the group of six adults, using headlamps to assist in the pre-hunt ritual.

It is barely 5 a.m., an unheard of time to be awake for many of their peers. But the two boys and a girl are keen on what lies ahead: the thrill of calling in ducks and geese and a front-row seat as nature awakes on a late-summer morning.

VIDEO: Teens hunt waterfowl on Pequea Creek

They are here because, since 1996, the Pennsylvania Game Commission has set aside one day each fall for young hunters 12 to 15 years old to hunt ducks a full three weeks ahead of the regular season. They can also hunt Canada geese, whose early season is already in progress.

The junior hunters have to be accompanied by adults.

In a time when fewer and fewer kids are taking an interest in hunting, the youth waterfowl hunt is an attempt to trigger interest in Pennsylvania's long hunting tradition.

So here we are, the kids' dads and three other adults just wanting to make the day special.

In the light of the equipment trailer, Jim Long of Ronks is juggling two iron skillets on a propane stove, mixing bacon, sausage and scrambled eggs for a streamside breakfast. The hunters roll the concoction into soft burrito shells and chomp down.

It's a good thing neither geese nor ducks has the sense of smell.

A rooster crows and suddenly there is a haste to get the kids into the duck blind fashioned from PVC pipe, plastic mesh and grasses on the bank of Pequea Creek, a few miles north of Strasburg.

A spread of decoys — mallards, wood ducks, blue-winged teal and a few Canada geese — is moving nicely in the current out front.

Kylie Robbins, 13, of Wrightsville, Jeffrey Long, 15, a 10th-grader at Conestoga Valley High School, and Dylan Shaubach, 15, also a 10th-grader at CV, take up positions on a board suspended between two buckets.

Someone checks a cell phone for text messages and is admonished.

"Everybody loaded? Is your safety on?" asks David Bolton, the K-9 handler for the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office.

"Kylie, like I said, just take your time," is the fatherly advice from Ron Robbins.

"Jeffrey, don't miss!" jokes Jim Long.

It's a good-natured ribbing because on one duck hunt last season, Jeff got two with one shot, an accomplishment he trots out to parry adults' jabs, such as the time one of his shots blasted a goose decoy.

Truth is, Jeff can call for ducks and geese on a par with his mentors.

Kylie's interest in hunting delights her father. Her mother not so much.

A reigning national teen majorette queen for 13- and 14-year-olds, she's in gymnastics, the jazz band and honors choir and band at Eastern Middle School in York County.

"People know me as a girlie-girl. (Hunting) was something different," she says, clutching a single-shot 20-gauge shotgun.

"I feel independent holding my own gun and trying to shoot something." She's already taken four geese but not a duck yet. She'd love to get a colorful wood duck.

"I didn't push her — she asked," adds her dad. "It more or less gives me one-on-one time with her."

Dylan already is a veteran deer hunter but is new to waterfowl hunting.

The strange whistling call of a wood duck is heard off to the right. Everyone tenses in anticipation.

But none materializes. From time to time, ducks can be seen lifting off a distant pond, but they seem zeroed in on other destinations and don't respond to the imploring calls.

Certainly, the ducks are being wooed by experts. Jim Long, Ron Robbins and Bill Rhine, who helped organize today's youth hunt, all make calls for Rhine's Susquehanna Custom Calls business (www.susquehannacustomcalls.com ).

Long and Bolton are both on the pro staff of Mossy Oak, the well-known hunting outfitter.

As anticipation wanes a bit, banter grows and voices rise above whispers.

"Look and listen — that's duck hunting," an adult says gently.

Meanwhile, the morning's goose flight is under way. All but one of the adults plop into camouflaged coffin blinds in the field.

One flock of about 40 geese circles five or six times, dropping lower each time. Several land amidst the decoys.

Finally, Rhine yells, "Take 'em!" and we drop three. Not long after, a single is expertly called in and we take it as well.

We figure maybe we should get the kids up here in the field for some action. Naturally, once they are encased in the blinds, the only goose to land alights in the creek, where Jim Long takes it.

Snug as a bug, Kylie takes a cat nap in her blind.

By mid morning, the flight is over and the war stories played out.

Ron Robbins has recounted the time he saw a Canada goose standing on top of a cow and the time he shot a goose and it plummeted into another hunter's blind.

Jeffrey tells me about the time he shot a duck and it disappeared down a muskrat hole and how bad he felt.

"I hated that," he says. "If I shoot something, I eat it."

It's time to start packing.

Sure, the kids wanted to get a shot. But no one is complaining.

"We wanted a shared hunting experience, to keep the kids involved and keep the tradition going," says Rhine, who only slept an hour the night before because he was fretting about getting all the details right.

Mission accomplished.

E-mail: acrable@lnpnews.com .