By the time pheasant season opened at 7:24 Saturday morning, about 40 real hunters had finished off their scrambled eggs and ham, sausage and hash browns and their real pancakes — guaranteed to make you shoot straight — at the Hallam hunters’ breakfast.

The volunteer cooks, helping raise money to rebuild the United Church of Christ destroyed by last year’s tornado, expected almost 100 more hungry people before they would unplug the real frying pans at 11 a.m.

Emily Schreiter, 9, was up at 5 for breakfast and pheasant hunting with the real hunters. She is one year shy of being old enough to hunt (by her dad Derek’s rules).

For many of the hunters drinking coffee and waiting for sunrise, the breakfast fund-raiser is a decades-old tradition that began in the city auditorium and moved to the Legion hall after the 2004 tornado.

Jeanne no longer walks the fields. She’s the human retriever who drops off husband Bruce and friends and their English pointer then picks them up at the end of the field, so they don’t have to walk back.

Some real hunters hunt from sunrise to sunset, says Bob Marshall of Lincoln, a real hunter who once collected 21 ticks while waiting for turkey.

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