The wind is stinging your cheeks, you’re bundled in every layer you own, and you’re high up in a tree watching a deer slowly graze on what’s left of the greenery on a cold winter morning. This is the rush senior Kael Dimmer feels the mornings he goes hunting with his dad and many dogs.

Kael Dimmer has been hunting with his dad since he could walk. It’s almost a tradition in their family. He goes with his dad, his dad went with his grandfather, and so on and so forth. At a young age Dimmer would go along with his dad on trips, without a gun of course, and watch him hunt for things like deer and pheasants. He took the hunter’s safety class at 14 years old to be able to carry a gun and go by himself, although he still mainly goes with his dad.

Dimmer hunts deer, pheasant, turkey, and duck. “It’s a cool feeling to cook what you get,” he said. “You feel like you’re providing for yourself.” His family cooks everything they bring home and like to only hunt things that are worth eating. They don’t see a reason in shooting small game, they won’t eat it anyways.

Dimmer often goes out with his dad and his three dogs. They are German short-hair pointers and have been known to be great hunting dogs. He said that the young puppy even seemed like they knew what they were doing when he and his dad took them out at just six months old. He said they mainly use the dogs when pheasant hunting because they are trained to point out where the birds are hiding in tall grassy areas. Dimmer said it’s definitely one of the cooler parts about hunting with them. They are great companions and even better hunting buddies.

Something Dimmer said he’s not so fond of when hunting is the cold. He goes mainly in the fall but starts at about 4:30 a.m., so the sun hasn’t come out to warm the area. It’s especially frigid when deer hunting because you’re not up moving around, you sit in a stand in a tree and wait. “It’s one of those things you forget about,” he said. The cold is just part of the experience and he hates it in the moments when he’s sitting and waiting for the wildlife to wake up but when he finally gets a big deer, “It’s definitely worth it.”

Dimmer’s overall favorite part about hunting is the feeling he gets while being out in the woods watching wildlife in its natural habitat. “It’s hard to describe to someone who doesn’t do it,” he said. It’s nice to watch the deer and other animals act “normal” because they don’t know that he is there.

Even when he does come home empty handed he’s not disappointed. “It’s getting to the point where it’s just cooler to watch them,” Dimmer said, describing the therapeutic feeling of experiencing nature.