Hello and welcome to Kentucky Afield.

I'm your host, Chad Miles.

Join us as we journey the Commonwealth in search of outdoor adventure to celebrate modern firearms season.

We're going to jump in a deer stand for a buck hunt.

But first, we're going to float down the green River and take in all the fall beauty.

Today I'm at the historic green River right outside of Greensburg, and you probably tell by the way, the trees look.

It is fall.

It's actually late October.

And this is the time of year that I usually spend in a deer stand.

But the last few days it seems like the deer movement has gotten a little bit slow.

And I can't think of a better time of year to be on one of the river systems here in Kentucky and doing a float, checking out all the beauty and hopefully catching some smallmouth.

Green River is a great place for it, but there are rivers all across the state of Kentucky that are absolutely perfect.

For whatever reason, people are getting really excited to get on the rivers in the spring and the summertime because they're cool and refreshing.

But the fall, this right now is the time of year where these bass, muskie and all other fish species, they know the temperatures are going down.

They feel the water getting cooler.

They know it's time to fatten up for winter.

So this could be a really good time to catch fish.

I'm super excited.

You know, I've been quiet, I've been worried about my sent control.

I've been fully camo█d up, sitting in a deer stand, and today I can't think of a better getaway to spend an afternoon out trying to catch a couple smallmouth fishing from a kayak.

Here we go.

What do we got here?

A rock bass!

Not exactly what I was expecting to catch.

But you know what?

Happy to have it.

Nice little rock bass.

Man, these creeks and streams.

We got a lot of these rock bass in them.

All around this area of Chaplin River, Salt River, Green River, rock bass and man, they are very quick to hit a jig.

Now, today it's been a little slow, but this little guy, not a smallmouth, but a rock bass.

Yeah, now we got us a smallmouth.

Seems like a today, I threw my swim bait for a while, which usually produces some fish.

And had to go to this jig, and it's all about getting a jig that is the right weight that you can just get it on there as slow as you possibly can, and let it just tumble down with the current.

And, this is a three 16 ounce and, you know, it's a fun way to catch fish.

It takes a lot of patience.

It's got to stay contacted to the bottom and really, really slow.

But it is a way you can catch some fish.

This is your, you know, 13 inch small mouth bunch of them in Green River.

And, you know, this tree lay down here.

I haven't been seeing any fish, like I've been floating through normally in the summertime and spring, you'll see them.

So I'm going to spend the rest of my float focusing on some of this lay down structure and see if these fish aren't sitting in their nice little fish.

What do we got here?

Looks like it might be another rock bass.

Sure is.

Ole rock bass.

These things are aggressive.

They love a jig.

They're fun to catch though, especially on a spinning rod.

Dragging that jig right on the bottom.

Every fish that I've had bite today.

Now, normally I like the swim bait.

Every single fish I've had bite today, the bait has been in contact with the bottom, moving slow, and most of it has been out of timber just like this.

Here we go.

Oh, a smallie.

Barley got him hooked Again, it's been a broken, broken record.

I was wearing these polarized lenses floating down this river.

A lot of it is four feet and shallow.

I can see the bottom.

I'm not seeing any fish whatsoever.

Zero.

They are up on in this cover, in these deeper pockets.

I wish I'd have known that earlier.

I spent way too much time throwing a swim bait up in the water column.

Every fish on the bottom, in the timber.

Deeper pockets, near current.

Not a big smallmouth, but a lot of fun on this beautiful fall day on the Green River.

Well, today has been an extremely relaxing, beautiful trip down the Green River.

I didn't catch much fish, but I caught enough to keep me interested and I learned a little bit about fishing in the fall.

I do a ton of smallmouth fishing on on big reservoirs throughout the winter.

And it seems like you always catch fish if, in all those points where current comes in close to deep water.

Well, this float that I chose today, didn't have a lot of deep water.

It was mainly shallow.

But, if I come back and do this again in the fall.

First off, it's stunningly beautiful.

Secondly, I will choose a spot that has deeper pockets.

And, I'll tell you what.

The fall color here in Kentucky.

Floating down a tributary or a river like the green River.

Absolutely, a beautiful way to spend an October day and throwing a fishing pole, catching a few fish.

Well, that's just icing on the cake.

Today I'm here with Cody Rhoden, who's the small game program coordinator.

Cody, you deal with a lot of people and get a lot of information on how much people are pursuing certain small games in the state of Kentucky, but that information is not easy to get, is it?

No, Chad.

It's not.

And so historically, the way we gather this information is through voluntary, hunter log surveys.

Regrettably, those surveys have been less and less participated in through time.

And so, you know, there's a lot of species we have within the agency that we know a little bit more about population wise things that we telecheck.

So things like whitetail deer, eastern wild turkey, but there's the vast majority of species we don't have telecheck for.

And we're not sure, you know, how many of these species are being harvested or even how many sports people are out there pursuing them.

If we don't know who's hunting what, we'll have a harder time of kind of, you know, managing for those specific species.

We're making it easy on a hunter out there.

All you need to do is log into your my profile.

And if you've never been on your my profile, there's so much really unique information out there.

You go to FW.KY.GOV, you click the My Profile.

You don't have to set up your my profile account.

The I.T.

people at the Department of Fish and Wildlife have already set up every person who's bought a hunting and fishing license.

It's already there.

All you have to have is your date of birth, your last name in the last four of your social.

So if you get into my profile, you're going to see all these titles on there, and then you're going to see one that says Game Species Hunted.

Click that.

It's a couple radio buttons.

You click which ones you pursued.

It doesn't ask any more questions.

No more questions.

Nothing.

The survey itself takes 15 seconds.

So you just open it up.

You just click the radio buttons to say which species you pursued the year prior.

And then you close it out and you're all done.

If you want to go on there and make sure that you show that you're interested in a species and hunting a species, and you want the department to know there's interest in that species, it's a great way to do it.

We're trying to get more information from the sports people so we can better serve their interests out there in the field.

I'm an avid small game guy.

I absolutely love small game.

But if you go and you buy a sportsman's license and it's a great tool for me because I can get cover the gamut, but it doesn't give the department much information on what I'm really concerned in.

And I mean, I'm a rabbit guy.

I want the department know, hey, I want good rabbit habitat on these WMA█s.

This is a good way for me to do it.

I can buy my sportsman's license, make it simple for me and still go on there, fill my survey out and give you guys the information that I want you to know about me.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And so, you know, that's what we want is ease of use, for the end user.

Other states might have a rabbit permit or something like that.

We don't want to do that.

We want to keep it simple.

But we also want to get some of this information on the back end.

So again this is a voluntary survey.

And we're really asking for sports people to go in there and check it out.

You'd be surprised how many species are on there.

It's possums and raccoons and groundhogs frogs, turtles.

You can kind of go in there and leave your information, leave what you're interested in, what you've pursued in the last year, 15 seconds, valuable information.

It's a great way to make sure that the species you're most interested in are getting some attention.

Exactly.

Yes.

It looks like this year the rut is going to line up perfectly with modern firearm season.

So let's take a look back at 2022, At one of our previous buck hunt Well, after about an hour and lunch getting back into the woods this morning, you know, we saw several bucks.

And most of the time they showed up 15, 20 minutes after rattling one of those bucks across the field.

Chasing the doe was a buck I've been seeing over and over for the last couple of years, never in range with a bow and it wasn't in range today with a rifle.

But he's working our area and he's chasing Does.

So I'm going to get back in the stand and hopefully we get a chance.

And that deer comes back because I sure would like an opportunity to take that deer.

Let's see what happens.

Now that is a fresh scrape.

This is about 80 yards from my stand.

It almost looks like that buck is taking a garden rake and just pulled all that grass and pilled it up.

And you can literally smell the buck in this area.

It's been hitting this pretty regularly.

So the spot where I'm at is the same spot where I muzzleloader hunted and the same spot I was at this morning.

Now I have bow hunted here a few other times.

And on two different occasions, I've seen a pretty good buck right on this wood-line.

Both times it was later in the evening.

So we got a wind that is blowing straight this way, right the way I walked in.

Not getting near that little patch of woods, that buck hanging out.

I know he's using this area because I can smell him in here.

And there's some scrapes in this area as well.

So hopefully we can get him to come and investigate this little field, because if he gets in, this field should be an easy shot with a high powered rifle.

This property, even though it's farmed by the same farmer.

It's actually two different landowners.

There are some hunters over on the right hand side and they've got permission to be over there.

This is just, you know, I deal with the same exact things that everyone else deals with when it comes to gun hunting.

You got to share the woods.

You got to be respectful of other hunters.

So we had a couple other people that are out here hunting as well on the right legally.

Hopefully we can get him in here.

We've had him there twice, both times I had a bow in my hand.

I couldn't make it happen.

Well, it's about 3:30, been in here for a little while.

No action just yet.

You know, it's getting dark.

Really dark past six.

So i█m start doing some light calling.

And hopefully, if we have a deer that is in this patch of woods right here, we can make him make a move this direction.

Deer.

There's a small buck.

Listen, listen.

You can hear him grunt.

Here comes a doe.

He's coming to check her out.

Cool, that little buck showed up, probably couldn█t hear it.

But I could hear it.

Light grunts, walking around.

Not interested in feeding at all, just smelling.

And then this doe showed up.

As soon as she hit that field.

Boy, he saw it.

He was behind us.

She saw that it was a buck.

She knew.

All right, he's going to pester the heck out of me.

And she took off.

Now she's right.

He's going to pester her.

We could█ve filled the two remaining tags right there.

We've got another deer.

Looks like a doe about 80 yards.

It's about 20 yards into the woods.

Hey, you see how these bucks are reacting to these does?

The more does you keep around your stand, just feeding around.

It increases your chances.

So, I love seeing these does.

Here comes a buck.

Here comes a buck.

Here comes a good buck.

Looks like about an eight pointer.

I can't tell.

Let's let him get out in the field and see what happens.

Oh.

Hold on.

He's rubbing.

He's actually a pretty nice nine pointer.

I've been sitting here all day watching that rub this morning, and now.

Pretty cool to see a buck come and actually rub on it.

I'm going to get a little better look, I've got weeds and stuff between me and the vitals.

Wait, this could be the same buck that made the scrape we saw on the way in.

Here comes another deer.

It is, a doe.

I'm kind of waiting to see what happens.

But I'm not gonna let that deer get to where i'm not shooting into the woods.

This looks like a pretty mature buck.

Look how much bigger the body is than the other deer we've seen.

I think we're still gonna see that buck again.

He█s chasing that small buck.

There they come, get ready.

He's coming.

He's coming back right here.

He█s coming right back.

Here comes a doe at the corner of the field.

She's about to pop out.

He█s coming.

Here he comes.

I█ve got him right now.

Here he comes.

Here he comes.

You on him?

Yeah, I'm good.

I don't like taking running shots, but that█s only about 60 yards, so I feel really confident taking that shot.

He's down.

He's right there.

I'm pretty fired up about it.

Really cool this time of year getting out here.

You know, as normally as a bow hunter.

I don't get in the woods too much during gun season.

To see the deer really in full rut, You know rounding those does up, keeping an eye on them.

Making his, making his rub.

He was pulling, pulling soil away from the bottom of that tree.

I mean, he's going through all the fazes of rut.

That's really cool to get to see all that.

I've had a great season.

I've got a freezer full of venison.

I was able to take deer with my bow deer with my muzzleloader, and now a deer with a rifle.

I can't ask for much more.

It's all about opportunities and I've had some chances, and I'm really happy with how this season has turned out.

Get ready, get ready.

Here's a doe.

She's about to pop out.

I've got one tag left.

The one on the right.

You on it?

Yeah.

I'm sitting there in my stand, and I had one tag left, and I know going to be processing deer because I've got a buck down.

I figured, you know what?

I can wrap it all up and end it up right here today and make it such a perfect season.

Filled all my tags burned my buck tag.

Couldn't work out any better.

We said when we parked out here, we came in, there's another truck.

We know there's a hunter because we we know this truck.

We know they're hunters that have permission to hunt here.

And they're hunting somewhere right over there.

Both of these deer went straight down.

I█ll be a courteous, courteous neighbor hunter here.

And we're just going to wait these out and see what pops out and not mess up their hunt.

There's that other buck.

That's a different buck though.

Our spike went over here.

I saw this buck this morning.

People think when they shoot a deer, they ruin their chances for the rest of the night, for a buck to show up.

We've seen way more deer after two shots have been taking than before.

That deer was shot right here.

And I think it circled right here somewhere.

Don't really need to do any blood trailing.

We know it's right here.

Yup, right here he is.

Wow.

He is in that briar bush.

Look at that neck, look at that.

We'll try to drag him out here and see what we got.

He is buried in here.

Well, you know what?

This is a perfect, perfect close to this deer season.

You know, this is just a really nice, mature buck.

I'm super happy with it.

Thinking back about how the season progressed, literally 5 or 600 yards on the other side of this cornfields where I started bow hunting this year.

Had some really cool encounters.

Saw a couple of decent bucks down there, but I kept seeing the deer up on this end.

Right before Muzzleloader season, moved up here and realized that these deer just loading in this little valley I'm in right now, came up here, was able to take a couple dose with my muzzleloader.

Saw a buck or two.

Nothing I really wanted.

Got into the firearm season, which you know, a lot of times I don't have a buck tag come firearm season.

I still had a buck tag and thought, you know what, it's getting too late in the year to pass up a mature buck like this.

So to be able to take this and to fill my last tag with that doe just caps it off.

It was just a perfect, perfect year.

So I couldn't be happier.

It's the reason you deer hunt.

You want the meat, but you want the experiences.

And even if I wouldn't have got a buck this year, I would have still had a great year.

It's about the time and the deer stand there enjoying all the things you see and just being a part of wildlife and Mother Nature.

Just a beautiful, beautiful year and what a nice buck to finish it up with.

Now let's check in and see who else has been out having fun in this week's ones that didn't get away.

Check out this beautiful white crappie that was caught by Brent Pomeroy.

This fish was caught at the Edmonton City Lake in Metcalf County.

Congratulations.

Jacob Vanover went hunting at Beaver Creek WMA and took this nice eight pointer with a crossbow.

Congratulations!

Elijah Barrett took his first deer, a nice ten point buck in Owsley County.

This deer was taken during the Youth Firearms season.

Nice job.

Here we have Heather Howell with a nice smallmouth bass that she caught while fishing at Dale Hollow Lake.

Here we have Mikey Roby with a nice largemouth bass that he caught while fishing at a private lake in Saint Francis.

Nice job, Regina Horton knows how to spend a beautiful fall day, and that's fishing for shell cracker in a private pond in Corinth, Kentucky.

Nice job.

Seven year old Easton Fannin headed west out to land between the lakes and took this nice buck.

Congratulations.

Here we have nine year old Walker Watson with his first time in the dove field.

Nice job.

Good luck over the next few weeks if you're out deer hunting and if you're hunting from an elevated tree stand, be sure to wear your safety harness.

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.

Did you know that Kentucky is home to the largest elk heard in the eastern U.S.?

With an elk zone twice the size of Yellowstone National Park.

Look how big that animal is.

I mean, this is just amazing.

And we enjoy one of the most diverse fisheries in the country.

Just ask Christine.

Very nice.

Wow!

And by the way, Kentucky is known for being one of the top five states for trophy whitetails each year.

Additionally, more than 100,000 Kentuckians have benefited from our conservation education programs.

Like the Salato Wildlife Education Center, Summer Conservation camps, good job, and our learn to Hunt and Fish classes.

Or did you know about the 1.6 million acres open to the public?

These are just a few things that Kentucky's Department of Fish and Wildlife have helped preserve.

This is one of several we have on the Kentucky River.

She's got plenty of room in that nest for chicks.

Who pays for conservation in Kentucky?

Well, since the department receives no general fund state tax dollars, we rely on the sportsmen and women of the Commonwealth.

He's been waiting years for that.

So if you enjoy Kentucky's resources, help us manage them by purchasing a hunting or fishing license today.

You can do so by visiting FW.KY.GOV