This week on Kentucky Afield football season is here and that means the demand for ground venison just went up for the Miles household.

We're in the woods looking for some.

Next, we'll see how one of the state's most ancient fishes is making a comeback.

Then we're in the woods with new hunters as they look to harvest their very first deer.

It█s all next on Kentucky Afield.

Hello and welcome to Kentucky Afield.

I'm your host, Chad Miles.

Join us as we journey the commonwealth in search of outdoor adventure.

Ask any experienced bow Hunter and they'll tell you that hunts never go exactly as planned.

And when deer hunting, you never know when or where a deer may show up.

Well, it's early September, very, very first week of Kentucky's archery season.

I'm here in a familiar spot in Shelby County in the same stand I hunted several times last year had quite a few encounters with some nice deer.

Just nothing.

I wanted to take just yet.

I really didn't see myself hunting this stand this early because as farmers do crop rotations this year this is in corn there could be a herd a deer stand right there and I would never know it.

So it really puts me in a situation where I have to set up here on the field edge and hunt the woods.

Well, this woods is thick.

It's 30 minutes after daylight right now.

And I can still barely see spots back in here.

It's going to be very, very hard to pick up a deer slip into the woods.

I'm going to have to stay on my feet, bow in hand release attached to my string and watching because of the deer comes through.

I'm going to have literally seconds to field judge it and decide to take a shot and then find a opportunity to get a really good shot.

Like all Septembers my freezers empty so I'm willing to take a doe stay tuned because it's going to be fast and furious.

Literally, if a deer comes in, it's going to be.

There it is.

Draw.

and shoot.

I had no idea where that deer came from.

I█m sitting up here.

Like I told y█all I abandon The field I'm watching down here on this trail where I know the deer have been traveling.

It's like that doe crawled out of my tree.

It's very, very wet today and you can't hear anything.

That deer was literally first time I saw it a foot and a half to two feet from the tree and she started to get a little nervous.

You saw her smell saw her smell.

Thank goodness she was upwind.

She couldn█t wind us and she would turn to figure out which direction she was going to go.

Gave me a real tight window.

I mean, a real tight window to draw and get a shot.

I think I put a really good shot on that deer.

It was really close.

Sometimes those are hard to hit because you shoot over them.

But I think I put a really good shot on that deer and it sounded like I heard her go down.

Hopefully.

It's exactly where I think it is.

That's the next objective.

Locate the deer as quickly as possible.

Get it out of here.

Start processing.

Well, here's my arrow.

A couple of things that you always want to do when you walk up on the impact site is.

First off, I'm going to take this arrow and I'm going to inspect First off, it looks like looks like all my blades on my broadhead.

It's a grim reaper.

Broadhead looks like they are opened and worked exactly like they're supposed to.

The blood I see on here, it's got some little bubbles in it.

It looks like a high shoulder shot, possibly through the lung and it's blood soaked all the way to tip.

Got a little bit of some bubbles on it.

Probably a single lung shot, if I had to guess.

Such a high angle, because this deer was right under me that it looked like it hit a little high.

But that means it'll come out the bottom, which is which.

A really good pass through shot.

Now, I'm not going to take this arrow with me.

I'm going to leave it right here.

This is the impact spot.

If I if I were to lose my blood trail I know I can come back right here and start again.

So right off the bat I'm seeing blood and I know the deer went in this direction and I believe it hooked and came back around here.

It looks like it ran a little circle.

I'm already seeing blood through this way, so I'm going to start tracking this thing, hopefully where it crosses this creek.

There should be a ton of blood All this is completely blood soaked.

I heard the deer get to this creek, so I know it made it to the creek.

I don't think it made it much past the creek.

Just there's just too much blood.

Here's the deer.

Here she lays right here.

Barely made it past the creek.

I thought I heard it fall down.

And here it lays.

All right, well, here she is.

Oh man, What a what a nice looking doe.

You can tell this deer is kind of transitioning from its summer coat to its winter coat.

It's getting real thick, and it's right in that process of shedding.

I'll tell you what, this was absolutely perfect.

The shot was in high and came out low, which is at that angle.

You want to try to aim where you want the arrow to exit.

And that's exactly what happened.

It turned out to be a perfect shot.

I couldn't be more excited to have this deer because my freezer is almost empty and I'm looking for some venison and some ground burger so that I can make chili and tacos and nachos and all that type stuff.

Hey, it's football season, you know?

So I'm looking forward to that.

And I tell you, this could not have turned out to be a better situation.

I want to get this thing drug out of this area.

This is the woods right here that I keep seeing a buck on camera over and over and over.

So now my goal is to get this deer out of here with leaving this little sent I possibly can.

I'm not even going to field dress it in here.

I'm going to hook it up and I'm going to drag it to the truck as fast as I can.

Get this thing processed, get it home.

And I'll tell you what, this here is going to be the beginning of me filling the freezer this fall.

The Lake Sturgeon is one of the newest reintroduced fish species here in the state of Kentucky.

Now, let's go catch up with fisheries biologists and find out what they're doing to manage this unique fish species.

So we're here at the Peter W. Pfeiffer Fish Hatchery in Frankfort, Kentucky.

We're going to be marking sturgeon today.

It's a lake sturgeon.

This is a restoration effort where we used to have lake sturgeon that existed in Kentucky.

So Lake Sturgeon are one of our really large, charismatic, big bodied, ancient fishes.

We haven't had a lake sturgeon that was native caught in Kentucky since 1954 and it was down on the Cumberland River.

We started this restoration program due to the fact that this fish is native to our waters.

It has the range has declined due to overfishing, due to dams, due to pollution.

So just like the elk and the peregrine falcon and the deer and the turkey, this is kind of the fisheries restoration project.

And we have a hatchery building that almost kind of built for our lake sturgeon.

They have recirculation tanks which allow us to chill the water to the temperature in which they need.

That has given us many years of 90% plus survivability, which is when we're dealing with rare fishes.

That's a really good thing.

So today in the hatchery, we're taking the fish that have been reared from from the egg to this larger than fingerling size.

And we remove scoots from the side of the body.

Now, these are the bony plates that line the outside on the body of the lake sturgeon.

So by removing two scoots that are side by side, that creates a gap.

And as the fish grows, that gap is preserved.

So that lets us now like this is a 2007 year fish versus a 2010 year fish versus this year's 2022 fish.

We have folks getting the fish out of the race ways into these tubs.

We use an anesthetic to temporarily knock out the fish so that we can do the procedure.

It doesn't harm the fish.

And once that's done, we put them in a second tub of fresh water, which is the recovery tub.

You know, the fish will come around within a minute or two and then they go back into a separate raceway.

And those are the ones that have been completed.

And so we just cycle through this process until all of the fish have been marked, and then they'll be ready to go on the truck in coming weeks to their stocking sites.

So the lake sturgeon, our prehistoric fish, they're actually ancestors to sharks.

And paddlefish is another fish species in Kentucky that they're related to.

They're kind of like a cousin.

And so they're a cartilaginous fish.

So lake sturgeon are kind of the charismatic species for the aquatics world.

We talk about the peregrine falcons, elk, deer restoration.

This is one of these big fish species.

They grow up to 150 to 200 pound it's going to take a long time for them to get there.

So thinking about this fish living up to 150 years, so, you know, well past probably our lifespan so well in our retirement, hopefully we'll see these guys spawning and getting some natural reproduction.

The lake sturgeon, they can live to be over 100 years old.

So they're their long lived fish.

They can outlive us.

Some of these fish that we stock, I may never see the outcome of it in my career, but these fish hopefully will be around for a long time.

Crossbow hunting continues to grow in popularity and is a great way to introduce a new hunter to the outdoors.

And the best news is crossbow season is now in.

Well, it's very early in the crossbow season.

And we have three hunters that have been wanting to get in the woods.

You're actually our most experienced hunter today.

That never happens to me from very first time in the woods.

This is actually who we are.

Very, very first deer hunter, isn't it?

Very first.

All we have to been in a couple of years, but haven't been successful yet.

You have taken some hunts, but have you ever taken a deer with a bow?

No, not at all.

So we're really looking forward to this hunt.

We're on a piece of property here in Shelby County that is pumped full of does and also has a couple really nice bucks.

So let's go check in with our hunters and see if they're ready So you've been hunting for a couple of years, right?

And you've been successful.

You actually have taken a deer before?

Yes.

My first year I went hunting with my dad and we took two deer.

And then the second time I went hunting, I took a couple of those to fill the freezer.

So I'm guessing you really enjoy eating deer as well?

Yeah.

I mean, there's no meat like doe meat.

That's something that everybody say.

And it really is true.

My husband's really into hunting, but I didn't really start getting into it myself until I went to, like, the becoming an outdoors woman class or the field, the fork.

That was where I really fell in love with hunting and getting to meet all kinds of other women who enjoyed it too.

So, Anthony, super excited to have you out here.

You started watching hunting shows before you'd ever hunted.

Well, as everybody knows the Covid kind of set things down, so I watched a lot of sports I█m a avid sport fan and and there was nothing on.

And I started watching all these hunting shows and just got more and more into it.

And I just was like, Man, I would really like to try that.

Have you ever had people in your family that hunted before?

Never.

Never.

Came from the projects, man, nobody.

Well, when you tell people, Hey, I want to try this deer hunting, what were they telling you?

Did they Did they go, Hey, this is really cool.

I want to try this too, or look at you like, what are you thinking?

What are you thinking?

Don't you know the Kroger's open?

You go get all the meat you want This is different.

It's very relaxing.

And hey, you may put some steak on the table.

You know, you can't beat that.

That's what I plan on doing.

Hey, good luck to you today.

Thank you.

Well, Joel, you're our vertical bow hunter today.

So tell me a little bit about what got you into hunting.

There was just something inside me that wanted to do it.

I mean, wanted to learn it, wanted to learn new skill.

And my wife and I were talking that we'd like to learn where our food comes from and be able to harvest something here in Kentucky and be able to bring that to the table.

It's really exciting.

So you decided to reach out to find some classes on hunting?

Yeah, my first class was the field, the fork Turkey hunt, and I took that and then I took the archery deer hunting field fork.

Well bow hunting is one of those things.

Everything has to line up.

Yeah, but I think you got a really good chance to put some meat on the ground tonight.

Good luck to you.

Thanks, Chad.

We've got all of our hunters in their blind, and we've got about three and a half hours till dark.

Joel is our hunter that's closest to us, and he's literally 200 yards on the other side of this pond.

And he is set up over a little field that's got some clover in it.

The deer have been feeding in there very heavily every single night.

So hopefully, as some luck.

Our next hunter is Megan.

She's in a little shaded area.

That is a situation where deer a lot of times come out earlier in the afternoon.

I suspect she may be our first to see a deer and then in the very back, we have Anthony.

Anthony's on the spot that we were getting so many pictures that our camera batteries went dead, but the deer were coming in really, really, really thick.

Keep our fingers crossed.

Hopefully we get a text real soon.

I'm probably going to regret it, but I might just wait and watch.

There█s a doe it just came out in the woods down there, about 50-60 yards down.

Moving around little bit.

like she█s going to stay right there on the edge on the woods.

way back in there.

So just just kind of glance at her.

Well, this hunt really has a deer camp kind of feel.

We're already getting text.

Megan has already seen some does.

Joel seen a couple of does.

Megan's actually got one really close to range right now.

Unfortunately, Anthony is only seeing squirrels and songbirds, but he's in a great location.

He's going to be seeing deer Soon.

I█m feeling alright.

Just anxious.

Excited.

I█m not all the way sad I didn█t take the shot.

I mean, you never like to see a deer walking away from you, you know, I█m not sad that I didn't take the shot.

I█m pretty excited though, because those deer showed up, like minutes after we sat down So I█m hoping more come out to graze.

Get to see them some more.

Got him.

looks like I might have smoked him.

I don█t know.

The shot felt good.

He went down right there.

He went down about 30 yards.

Well, we just got a super exciti text.

It looks as if Anthony had a small buck come in, made a shot, and they said the deer is down.

So we're going to go check them out here in a few minutes and see what he got.

That group of yearlings and does That came back from before that we let walk.

they came back, not the whole group but some of the group.

Now they're walking down the field.

I'm hoping they'll come back for some more corn.

I just got word Anthony just killed a buck.

That█s pretty awesome.

This is his first hunting trip and we█re pretty happy for him.

Got a doe down here in the bottom of the field quite a ways out right now, but that's exciting.

Here's your bolt right there.

Here's your bolt.

And you shooting a rage broadhead.

It's open, covered in blood.

See those fletchings?

Yeah.

So there you go.

There's that.

And here's blood right here.

It went right through there.

I know It went right through there.

Walk through there and see if you see any more blood.

It went right through that way.

There it is right there.

Oh yeah.

There's a deer right there.

That deer didn't go 80 yards.

Here you go, man.

That's a great, great deer.

Very first deer ever there you go.

What an experience man.

I can't believe it, man.

My first time out, man.

This first time out and you take your buck in velvet you would never go to the grocerie store again.

You may just go out and bring the protein home this way.

What an awesome experience.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Oh, man did I I can't stop smiling.

I'm like a kid right now.

One trip in the blind, one buck down.

That's pretty good right there.

Smile.

Come on, you can smile.

I█m telling you.

They█re facing toward us too much.

Oh my goodness, come on girl, turn sideways for me.

She needs to turn sideways.

Come on, big girl.

Come on, turn around.

Okay, I█m taking her I█m all shaky.

I█m glad we waited.

I█m glad we waited because I felt really good about that shot.

I feel like it was a good, clean shot.

And I heard her crash as soon as she went to the woods.

Oh my goodness, my grandpa's going to be so proud.

Right now, we got several bucks down in the corner and one really, really big buck and some younger bucks down there.

All the does seem to have bolted.

Well, Megan, what do you think?

I heard you made a shot.

That was so much fun.

Yes, that was awesome.

It was- I want to sit here and talk to you some more, but I also want to go look for her.

It was pretty incredible.

So do you think you put a good shot on it?

I do.

I do.

We waited a long time for the right shot.

Well, let's go see.

Okay, let's go see what we got.

Oh, oh, yeah.

Right there.

Okay, so this is a very well used trail.

You want to start walking that way or do you want me to do it?

You know, it came in right through here.

Let me check this way, just to be sure.

When he went the other direction, I was like, “Turn around, come back this way!” over here.

I just walked up on her.

That's a big doe.

That is a lot of chili.

right there.

You know, it didn't bleed a whole lot and we were trying to trying to track it.

And we just walked in here just a few feet from where we lost the blood.

And there she lays.

I'm gonna grab a leg, and we're going to drag this thing out here and get it out here in the light.

We can get a better look at it.

Okay, great.

Look at that.

That's nice.

I'm sorry.

I'm just.

I'm just so excited.

I'm speechless.

I'm so thankful that.

That we got a good shot on a deer.

For this hunt, patience was really the name of the game.

To get a good shot on a good deer.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, hop in and let's get a picture.

Yeah.

So how did your hunt go?

Yeah, it went good for not harvesting anything, but we saw we had a doe that came up and stayed within probably 100 to 50 yards of us for seem like 3 hours.

After that, you actually saw some bucks, right?

Yeah, we saw five bucks down in the corner of the field, which is amazing.

And a 9-point with the odd kicker that came out that he was a big- he would have been a shooter.

I'm glad you came out.

And it was an awesome experience.

You know, I had no anticipation that we would come out here and and really get two deer on the ground, much less have three incredible hunts.

Yeah.

But that's the reason we bowhunt.

if you came out here and killed one every single time, it wouldn█t be Wouldn't do it a whole lot.

Yeah.

You're looking for the challenge.

You got to spend some time in the woods.

What a cool afternoon.

It's nice.

I really appreciate it.

Now let█s check in and see who else has been out having fun in this week█s One█s That Didn█t Get Away.

Seven year old Walker Hayden knows a really good bait to catch blue gill on.

That's bologna.

He caught this bluegill on Lake Cumberland.

Nice job.

Can you feel it?

The temperature is starting to drop and fall is in the air.

Make plans now to get outdoors and remember hunting and fishing on private property is a privilege.

Always ask permission and thank the landowner.

Until next week, I'm your host, Chad Miles.

And I hope to see you in the woods or on the water.