Dating a guy who loves hunting, fishing and just being outdoors can be an adventure. Usually a very cold adventure where you’re half frozen, snot is dripping from your nose and you can’t feel your hands or feet. Meanwhile, your guy still looks like a Greek god in camouflage and hunter orange (no matter how cold it gets)—but it’s an adventure nonetheless. They love being out in the wilderness surrounded by trees and because you love him, you learn to love it, too. You begin to appreciate nature in a way that you never really did before you met, and though your boyfriend is usually trying to kill that nature whether it’s a deer, a squirrel or any other sort of furry woodland creature, you still see the beauty of it and you start to love to be surrounded by it.

Now let’s talk about actually going deer hunting with your man. This is an outdoorsman’s favorite and most important holiday of the year. They start the prep work months beforehand by putting up tree stands, setting up cameras and bait piles, driving around shining deer (still don’t know the point of this) and constantly discussing strategy for when opening day comes. You see the excitement build as the day comes closer and closer, and it becomes the only thing they talk about. You constantly are hearing about which tree stand is the best, which gun they wish they had, how big the deer are from the trail cams and how excited he is. You learn more about guns and deer in the week leading up to opening day of hunting season than you ever thought was possible (apparently it’s a shell, not a bullet, who knew?).

Opening day finally comes and you have to wake up at 5 a.m. even though you stayed up until 1 a.m. because the whole family was there celebrating and playing games, too excited to go to sleep. You put on 10 to 20 layers of orange clothing and then begin the trek to the tree stand that they somehow can find in the middle of the woods even though you get lost within the span of a minute. You sit on the tree stand and watch the sunrise, and slowly, the forest starts to wake up even though you’ve been up for two hours already. Every snap of a twig or squirrel moving around in the snow makes you instantly alert, ready to see the brown mass of fur that says that a deer has come out. You wait and wait and begin to question your boyfriend’s sanity, because how could anyone sit out in the cold for hours on end willingly?

Then a buck walks out into the open, and you instantly understand how your boyfriend can sit out here for hours waiting day after day. Your body instantly heats back to normal as the adrenaline pulses through your body. You follow the deer’s every movement while you watch him line up his gun to take the shot. You hear the explosion from the gun and you see the deer take off, but he’s certain that he hit it (you have no clue how he knows this but he swears he hit it). You follow the blood trail and finally find the deer and try not to throw up as he cleans it (blood and guts everywhere!). Then you haul the deer back to the house and watch as he explains every detail to his family and can’t help but repeat it over and over as more and more people come to take a look at it. You feel that gush of pride and joy at his happiness for finally getting a big buck that he can mount on his wall and even start to tell the story yourself, explaining it with as much detail and pride as he did.

Dating a guy who loves to go deer hunting is the best thing you can do even though you may not like the cold or sitting quietly for hours on end. There is nothing more exciting than getting to spend a whole day with your partner doing something that he loves to do and actually getting to be a part of it. You get to be there when he gets his deer for the season and he loves that you were there to see and share the joy in it. You may not be that into the outdoors but it's certainly worth it to go hunting with your guy and see what it's all about. Who knows—maybe you'll be a hunter yourself in no time.