This week on Kentucky Afield.

We're enjoying the youth firearm season alongside two young hunters, one of which is Chad's son, Leo, who's looking for his very first deer.

Then, it's getting to be the time of year where everyone's looking for ammo.

But we're finding out how to reload our own.

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.

Two years ago, we took out my daughter Campbell for her first ever deer hunt.

This year, it was my son Leo and his friend Charles█s turn.

Well, early morning, we're here in Henry County.

It's October and it's a youth deer hunt.

Today, I've got my son here with me.

This is his very, very first deer hunter today.

And you're hunting with a brand new friend you got.

Charles, you've killed several deer out here, haven't you?

Yeah.

I know.

You know exactly what you're in for.

Everything is new for him, and we█ve got Chuck Rollins here.

Chuck, this is your piece of property.

Yes sir.

And I'll tell you what I know you put a lot of time and effort energy out here managing this farm.

This is kind of what it's about isn█t it?

Yeah, this is what it's about.

You know that these boys get to come out here and, you know, see deer and hopefully both of them will be able to pull the trigger this morning.

But I think it's going to be a fun hunt for both of them.

So a lot of deer here.

Yeah, we were.

We were.

Yeah, we were out there or the day before yesterday.

Deer sign everywhere.

I think it's going to be a really good day.

You know, if we don't get it done this morning, that's fine, because we got some better spots to go this evening.

You know what?

It's kind of a brisk, cool morning.

If you're a deer hunter, that's what you want.

This is perfect.

For a youth hunter you like temperatures in the low thirties.

You guys are bundled up.

We got our orange on.

We got about 40 minutes till daylight.

I'd say we start making our way.

What do you think?

Yeah.

Let's get everything loaded up.

Let█s go.

Alright Leo, it's legal shooting light right now.

So if we see a deer, we can shoot.

Now the deer have been crossing this road, right that way.

So I want you to keep an eye out.

You can actually see better than me because I got this blind in the way.

So look down that road, and we█ll get the gun up and get ready.

I want you to either stand up or put your knee in that seat and hopefully you get a shot right this way, Okay?

Okay.

Are you warm?

Yeah.

Okay.

Good.

So Charles, see the big food plot on the left where grass is real tall?

Yeah, I think I see it.

If a deer comes out, you get on it, just hold the gun and i█ll adjust the scope to where you want it, okay?

Because right now it's only on like 6 power.

But if it█s way out there I█ll adjust it up a little bit higher.

Leo, there's a deer.

It looks like a small doe.

Get your gun up.

Wait, It's looking back.

There's another one right behind it.

Okay.

It█s another doe.

We█ve got two does out in the road.

Oh, they just crossed the road.

They walked out, walk right across.

They look like they're really small, so don't worry, it's early.

We'll probably see some more.

I█m going to wait for it to turn broadside.

It's pretty big for a four pointer.

It'll turn.

Just be patient.

It█s looking at us.

It█s staring directly at us.

Just stay on it.

Are you nice and steady?

Trying to be.

I can turn the scope up higher if you want me to?

No, don█t it█s already good.

Okay.

Wait, wait, wait.

Don█t move.

There's another one right there.

It's closer.

It's literally right in front of us.

It█s right there.

I see it now.

It█s a little spike.

It█s making a scrape.

Okay, I█m going to shoot it.

Nice and easy, right in the shoulder.

Right in the front shoulder.

Did you hear that?

That was definitely a gun shot.

That was definitely a gun shot and that was definitely Charles█s stand.

Let's see what his text is.

look like Charles got a small buck.

It's on the ground, so looks like he made a good shot.

The second I pulled the trigger, I just saw it drop.

So I was pretty excited.

Hit it right in the shoulder.

This one stepped out at about 50, so we were definitely going to take a 50 yard shot instead of 180.

He got on him quick and made it happen.

Well Leo it's about time to get down.

Did you have fun on your first deer hunt?

Yeah, It was fun.

We got to see a whole ton of wildlife.

From deer, squirrels, chipmunks, everything.

Well, I'm glad you had fun.

I tell you what, let's start gathering our stuff and we'll get down.

We'll go see Charles's deer.

What do you think?

Sounds good.

We'll look at that Charles, you put a great shot on that deer.

Nice job, buddy.

Thanks.

I'm sure that deer went straight down, right?

Oh yeah he just collapsed.

What do you think about that, Leo?

Yeah i█m ready for the evening hunt.

I'll tell you what, Chuck, you've picked a really good spot for this afternoon, hunt haven't you?

Yeah, I've got a good spot.

I call it the apex.

That's probably my favorite spot on the farm.

I've been up there twice and there's some really good angles to shoot.

Youth season is two days long and you got a deer in the first 40 minutes.

Nice job.

We'll get it taken out and processed and give us a little bit of a break and be right back in the tree stand.

Hey, good luck.

Good luck tonight.

Thank you, you too.. All right Leo.

This was the hunt I've been waiting for.

This evening hunt in this stand right here.

It█s really going to be something special.

I have this great feeling.

We're set up that way because the way the wind is blowing, the deer should show up right there in that little green field.

There's a food plot down there and there's a camera and it's been covered in deer in the evenings.

So that doesn't mean a deer won't show up in one of these other areas.

I'll keep an eye out, but I want you to focus on that area, okay?

If the deer comes out there, take your time.

You don't have to rush a shot.

I don't care if the deer█s there 3 or 4 minutes before you shoot.

It's probably not going to go anywhere for a while.

Hey, this is going to be good.

I'm very excited.

Are you excited?

Yeah.

This is your time right here.

Beautiful day for a deer hunt.

Oh, Leo, deer, right behind us.

Look, all the way back in the backfield.

I see a doe there.

Oh, it's looking right at us about 160 yards away.

I don't think we can get turned around.

Oh, oh, deer.

Deer.

Deer.

Right in our opening.

Get ready.

See that dead tree right there laying on the ground?

Oh, yeah, he's right behind it.

Get ready.

Put your glasses on.

Take your safety off.

Just keep the crosshairs on it.

Wait for it to turn.

All right Leo, whenever you're ready.

Slowly squeeze the trigger.

You got it down.

Hey.

That's a great shot.

That's a great shot.

It█s right out there.

Wow.

Oh, my gosh.

All that time sitting in the stand all day.

Put that back on.

Hold on.

I can█t really hear much.

You dropped it right there.

Great job, buddy.

Hey, you dropped it right there.

That's about.

That's about a 90 yard shot straight down.

I don't know where you hit it.

But I know it was a great shot.

Hey, nice job.

Well Leo, your first deer.

Yeah.

What an awesome day of deer hunting.

We got out here this morning.

You saw a couple of deer, but it was very quick and they got through on us and we couldn't get a shot.

This evening we had that deer behind us.

But what happened there?

Well, we saw this deer and it crossed.

We left that deer and came to this one.

First day in a deer stand.

You got two hunts in.

A morning and a evening, saw deer both times and was able to take a big doe.

Hey, what do you think about deer hunting?

It's really fun.

Hey, Leo, I hear Chuck and Charles on the ATV.

Come and get us right now.

Hey, man, good job.

We got it done.

Got it done man.

That a█ boy.

We got it done.

I'll tell you what.

This is a hunt I will never forget for the rest of my life.

People get into reloading for many reasons, but for me it's all about matching my ammunition to the game that I'm hunting.

We're here today at Nicholasville reloading supplies and guns, and I'm here to learn about something I've wanted to know about for a long time.

And that's reloading.

I'm here with Randy Bickley.

And Randy, you've been reloading for a long, long time.

Yes, sir.

Here at the store, we get customers on a daily basis that come in.

What are the basic fundamentals to reloading?

What's the bare minimum amount of equipment that I would need?

How expensive is it to get in to?

Tell me a couple of reasons why someone would want to get into reloading.

Cost is probably what most people think of first and foremost.

You take an oddball caliber like we're going to demonstrate today a 325 Winchester short Magnum, its relatively new cartridge, 15-18 years old, but it's extremely hard to find the ammunition.

One box of 20 rounds is typically around $80-85 after tax.

If you have to mail order it, then you have freight included in that.

So you can easily get up in the hundred dollars per 20 rounds.

Not only cost, you have a lot of people that are trying to squeeze as much accuracy out of the gun as they possibly can.

Custom reloading saves money, but actually can increase your guns accuracy as much as 60% in cases.

Another reason is out of date or antiquated.

A lot of calibers out there you physically can't buy components for.

You have to hard cast to your own lead.

You have to research different powder charges.

And another reason is personal satisfaction or gratification to know that you physically built that load.

Think of it like a shotgun.

Our grandfathers had one break open shotgun that was their meat provider.

They hunted 90% of their game with that one shotgun.

But they changed projectiles.

They changed shot load.

They changed shot length, shot sizes, different grains of powder.

They often reloaded.

I see you've got a couple of components here to help build a rifle round.

Tell me all the individual pieces of a manufactured factory round.

So what you've picked up is a factory, Winchester Super X round, as you can see right here.

These are loaded charges that have never been fired.

These are the once fired cases that came from those.

The byproduct that we want to salvage.

The case is approximately 45 to 50% of reloading cost.

So if you have the case in this case for a gun that's rare, you're saving 45 to 50% of the cost right off the bat.

Wow.

This brass has been washed.

It has not been processed.

We're going to actually do that step today.

This is actually finished loaded ammunition.

That's from the same brass that that was.

So we're taking this bullet.

We're firing it, creating this brass.

We're going to inspect and wash this brass.

We're going to clean it.

We're going to resize and de-prime it.

Then we will trim it.

We will chant for embeddable.

Remove the bur from the flash hider, will use a particular powder charge and type and weight with a particular projectile.

We'll come back to this machine and actually seat the bullet in, and we'll measure it to make sure it's the correct overall length.

That's all it takes.

There's four main components the brass, the primer, the powder, and the projectile.

Now, this is a very quick overview of reloading.

By no means, by watching this segment, are you going to be proficient at reloading.

There's a lot of information, you've read, a lot of manuals.

You've done this for many, many years.

This is kind of just a basic overview of what reloading is, right?

This is as quick and down and dirty as I can be in a very short period of time.

Yeah.

So if you think that's something you may want to get into, the first step would be when you're out shooting, save your brass.

Save your brass.

You said this is 40% of your cost?

It can be.

With pistols not so much so, but rifles.

It is.

We're going to do this demonstration today with one particular rifle caliber only.

So we're going to refer to our reloading manual.

The reloading manual█s going to show you all the processes of what happens when the bullet ignites.

We'll talk about equipment.

You have to have a set of dyes.

There are no fewer than six different manufacturers of dyes.

There are differences in price and there are differences in quality.

This set of dyes is a brand new set of dyes.

There is a collet shell holder that has to go in each individual round and the label on the box physically will tell you it's a full length dye set for the 325 WSM and it uses a shell holder number 43.

This is a shell holder 43 and this is the actual sizing dye.

Okay.

You can buy used equipment online.

Average normally 100 to $150 for a press.

Mm hmm.

You have presses that are called turret presses that have a top tool head holder.

If you will.

A turret you can put multiple, dies around that turret, put one shell in, and every time you pull the handle, you'll rotate the turret and then do the next step, rotate the head and do the next step.

So if you were going to load like multiple rounds or you wanted to reload 1000, 2000 rounds, you might want a turret.

Even if you want to do as I had done.

If you want to do 40 rounds, you're going to inspect your brass, you're going to wash your brass, you're going to re inspect the brass because the dirt and the powder fouling may very well be hiding a superficial crack that you didn't see.

You just thought it was a dirt smudge.

You're going to re-inspect it.

You're going to inspect every step of the process.

If you're reloading to be in a hurry, you need to find another hobby because this is not something you want to take lightly.

Is this something you really want to do safely and efficiently.

And you have to go by the book.

Okay.

All right.

At this time, we're going to get the table cleared off and we're going to get set up so that we can actually start doing some reloading.

Now we're set up to actually reload, and this is reloading once the brass has already been cleaned, we've already inspected these ten rounds.

Any time you use a sizing dye, whether it be to de-prime or size, you have to use lubricant or you will wind up getting your brass stuck in the dye.

So I've already placed these ten rounds in my individual loading block.

At roughly a 45 degree angle, I'm going to make two passes so that the overspray basically goes down in the chamber and as well as the top, we want the overspray pattern to capture as much as we can.

It's going to creep around the brass.

Okay.

From there, we already had the press set and it is adjusted.

So we have zero lash and the take up of the handle we're going to push down until it bottoms out.

Pull it back up.

Now what That actually did, I de-primed it and I fully resized it.

And as I come back up, I have to go back against the expander ball, which takes it back again.

So now this brass, the primer has been removed, it's been fully resized.

So now what we need to do is we have sized them, and we need a double check what our case length is.

Right now, our case length is 2.105.

Our book tells us that our trim length is 2.090.

So we're gonna trim that excess length back off.

This is a case trimmer, and I'm going to turn the mandrel until it doesn't go any more.

Now there are serrations on this, just like a dial caliper telling me how many thousandths I've got to adjust this.

So now that we've trimmed it, we're at 2.090.

Oh yeah.

And as you see the burr forming, that's how much metal it's actually trimming.

All right.

So now we have these eight rounds.

Now that we've done that, we need to chamfer and bale.

All it's going to take is just a couple of turns because you have three cutting faces.

That particular edge trims the outside, which is the bevel.

This put a chamfer on the inside.

The inside chamfer helps the bullet feed into the brass without distorting or scratching, removing material from the diameter of the projectile itself.

The next step that I'm going to do, we're going to burr the inside of the flash hole.

The flash hole is the hole in the very center of that primer pocket area.

You want that burr removed.

Now, that's how much material I just remove that was sticking inside that hole.

Sometimes you have to put a glove on to help hold the brass.

All right, so now that we've finished all of that, this is actually a beveler.

I want to put a rounded edge to help funnel that primer in there.

And that's what that does.

Not all brass is going to require this step.

Your case inspection will determine whether that needs to be done or not.

So from here, we've finished the case preparation.

We are technically now ready to come back to the reloading press, and the powder measure and powder scales, and now we're ready to load these final rounds.

All right.

So now we're set up back over here at the actual reloading press.

So we've inserted our primers and the primer tube.

They're ready.

We've removed our sizing dye.

We'll insert one case in the case feeder.

We're going to actually pull back on the primer lever, which loaded a primer in the cup, lower the handle, push the cup forward and push forward.

With that you can see the new primer is actually just a little bit below flush.

It's pushed down and you can see the radius edge that we trimmed.

Yeah, that looks great.

And I never touched the primer.

If you don't want for oils from your skin to contact the powder or the primer, I actually put my powder in and I just the screw up or down to insert amount of powder that I need.

We're loading 65 grains.

I want my tenth to be on zero.

In this case, it needs possibly one kernel.

It is dead even on zero.

That is exactly 65 grains.

I'm going to hold the powder funnel and I'm going to slowly pour that in.

Tap it for just a second, make sure it all fell down and repeat the process.

Okay.

Now that I've dumped the powder in I'm going to take a flashlight and I'm just going to secondary check again, you can't check too often.

I want to look inside each one to measure, to make sure there's powder in there.

I don't want to take the chance of missing one.

So these are the projectiles that we're using.

These are Barnes, TSX█s, and they're actually going to seat that far down inside the brass because we're loading it to the same overall length recommended.

We're not loading specifically to your gun, but as you can see where the powder line would be, that bullet is sticking down into that powder and that powder is actually going to come on at the end of the case neck.

So now we're ready to actually seat the projectile.

We're going to insert it into the case mouth hold it centered until it enters the end of the machine.

And we're just going to fully close the press and bring our handle back up.

Now, I've already taken the advantage of setting this assembly, so that is the right length.

Our calipers are right now set on a true zero.

We are not crimping at all and our case length is 2.860 on the money.

You are completely loaded, my friend.

What I love about this process, one of is a lot of fun.

It's very educational.

And now I have a premium round that you've taught me how to duplicate when I need more.

It was a very quick and brief session and look forward to helping you further you as long as you continue to do this in the future.

Thank you so much.

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 really impressive buck taken by 14 year old Colin Walker.

This Deer Green scored 164 inches.

Nice job.

Here we have Hunter Hiley, who's six years old and he took this buck in Menifee County on his birthday.

Happy birthday.

Here we have 12 year old Nathan Allen from Madison County who took this nice buck using his 243 Winchester.

Nice job.

Here we have 11 year old Nova standing with her cousin Julianna.

Nova is holding a nice smallmouth bass that she caught at green river.

Here we have Dylan McCann with his first muskie that he ever caught on Green River Lake.

Nice job.

Check out nine year old Bryce Cantrell with this crazy 17 point non typical Harrison County buck.

Great job.

We have been spending a ton of time in the field this fall.

But don't forget, fall is also a great time for some fall fishing.

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.