This week on Kentucky Afield.

It's our favorite time of the year to Deer Hunt and sitting over a fresh cut cornfield.

We couldn't be more excited to be out.

Next.

Hunting with a dog is always a good time, especially when they have the enthusiasm of a coon hound.

Then, you can't eat the antlers, but you do have plenty of other options.

We'll show you how to do a European mount on your 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.

If you've been a deer hunter for a while, you probably know that blood trailing a deer can sometimes be difficult.

But if you stick with it and you show some determination, the reward is always worth the effort.

Late September, bow hunting here in Kentucky.

It doesn't get any better than that.

I█ll tell you, I█ve have been hunting this piece of property for a while and this week the cornfields have been cut.

I got out this morning and I saw quite a few deer, most of them on the other end of the field.

I did see a small buck come right under my stand.

Right here, a little buck.

And that buck has been showing up on camera with one of my target bucks.

I got really, really excited, but my target buck didn't show up.

These fields were recently cut and there's a lot of loose corn out here in these fields and these deer are moving a lot, picking up little kernels here and there.

That makes me super, super excited.

I tell you what, we've got a north wind.

It's not swirling.

It's coming pretty much straight out of the north, which is perfect for this setup.

So hopefully as I walk in, get up in my stand, I could start seeing deer pretty quickly.

It's 60 degrees.

It's going to be getting down into the forties tonight.

This is all perfect situation for a early bow hunt here in Kentucky.

Well, set up and ready to go.

Conditions feel perfect.

Now the wind is coming straight from this way.

We have to walk in this way so any deer that comes from down here is going to walk the path I walked in, as well as be walking right where my wind's blowing.

Anything that comes out from down here, or behind me, should be perfect wind tonight.

It feels great out here.

I'm looking dead West.

This is north.

I hate hunting when i█m looking west when it█s really sunny and hot.

But I have a little bit of leaf canopy right here, and there's a lot of cloud cover.

I'm really excited.

This could be really good.

You know when you're sitting in a deer stand and you hear something rustling in the weeds.

You normally don't expect it to be a rabbit.

Man, I love things.

He's got to wait about two months.

Well, I got about an hour and a half left.

Shadows are starting to get a little bit long on the field edges.

In the very back, I looked up and deer are just pouring out of the woods into the cornfield.

I'm not sure exactly how many there are, but they█re at least 300 yards away, but that's a really good sign.

They're really starting to come to the field right now.

We got a pretty good buck that just stepped out into the field, way far away.

He█s way up there in the corner.

Man, this is going to be a race against darkness.

We've got a deer making its way, that we█ve been watching for a while.

It█s about 80 yards out.

Now, we've got deer on this point over here coming our way as well.

I don't know if either will make it here before dark.

These deer behind me, they█ve now crossed the field, they're pretty much out of play.

But these deer that i█m watching have stepped back into the woods.

They've been doing that all night and they've been popping out.

They're making their way to us, but it's very slow.

They could walk this trail.

It█s literally right in the woods, which would put them underneath my tree, hopefully they pop back out right here in the field.

Oh, right here.

Deer right here.

The biggest one is in the back.

Yes or no?

Yeah.

I did not think those deer were going to make it here.

I don't think that was a great shot.

We█ll find out.

I█ll have to give it to completely dark now.

See if I can find my arrow.

Well we waited till it was dark and then some before we got down on the tree.

I just didn't feel very comfortable about my shot.

So we get down.

Of course the arrow was right there where we found it.

Looks like a clean miss.

I mean, there's very, very, very, very, very little of anything on it.

A couple of hairs.

The smallest little speck of blood.

Thought, wait a minute.

I saw that deer go up and kick and think well something's up here.

So we heard some thrashing while we were in the stand after the shot.

Like a while after the shot.

Walked over, found a significant amount of blood and started tracking it.

We█re in some thick stuff now.

I mean it's thick, thick, thick, but the blood is getting thicker.

I think we're getting close.

Oh, look, there she lays right there.

There she lays.

All right.

Oh, my goodness.

What.

What a crazy experience man.

I tell you what, I█ve been Bow hunting since I was 13 or 14 years old.

Never have I ever seen a situation where I had an arrow that was this dry and started finding the puddles of blood that we found, and was able to track this deer and find it.

I tell you what, I couldn't be more excited.

You know, tonight was supposed to be a buck hunt.

I planned on buck hunting, but when this doe came in and I have room in the freezer, I thought, you know what?

I'm going to take this shot.

With a little luck, and some persistence, and just sticking with it, I got my dear.

Have you been running trail cameras, but you've got as many pictures of raccoons as you have of deer?

Well you may be in luck, because raccoon season opened on October the first.

So we've got three dogs tonight.

The first dog we█ll hunt is Remi here.

She's my oldest dog.

She's seven years old.

Will be eight this summer.

Got her from Alabama, raised her from a puppy.

And then these two are brother and sister in here.

And they're about to be eight months old.

Oh, wow.

Got them from Indiana.

So we've been training them.

So is that something you like doing?

You like starting them from real young?

I have raised somewhere near to 5 to 6 dogs from puppies.

We actually lost a dog recently.

I've got a picture of her right here.

Her name was Pig and we won a lot of competition hunts with her.

So she's missed.

But hopefully she's here with us tonight.

I tell you what for people who own and run dogs.

You spend so much time with these dogs, they kind of become a part of you don't they?

Oh, yes, they sure do.

Coon hunting is a family kind of thing.

And having these dogs I couldn't do without my brothers and my mom and dad and especially my wife who really helps take care of them.

It's it's not something that you can just forget about during the summertime and pick it back up when hunting season comes.

It's 365 days a year.

As excited as you get to get out here and do this, they're more excited.

They're way more excited.

They would go every night if we could.

One of the biggest safety things for coon hunting is making sure you have a collar on the dog that has your name and updated number on it.

All right, so we can take her down here just a little bit past the truck and hopefully get a coon treed.

She's treed down and that's her tree bark.

You can hear she's every breath she's barking.

How far away we got now?

Well, she's not very far.

She█s... Less than a hundred yards?

Yeah, she's about 79 yards in there.

All right.

Well, I think she thinks she found one so we can head that way.

All right.

You've said you've had nights out here where you treat many ten coons in a night, huh?

Yeah.

And we've come out here and went home empty handed, so we'll see what happens here.

Well, that's hunting.

We█ll shine the tree now and see if we can't find him.

Chad it Looks like there's a hole at the top where branches off of there.

Den tree, huh?

Yeah.

Can't really do anything when there's a hole in the tree.

Yeah.

Oh, we'll pull her off there and you're going to send her back out.

We'll send her back out.

We've got plenty of property to hunt.

We will go and try again.

All right.

Hey, that's part of it isn█t it?

That is part of it.

Good luck, girl.

We're all counting on you.

Remi is so excited about this tree, actually chewing on it.

We can try and squall and see if we can get a look.

Well, I'm not seeing them in this one either.

We'll pull her off and go back out to the road.

We'll go to where I proposed to my wife.

That should be a good luck place because she said yes.

There you go.

That's got to be a good spot.

So the Garmin says she's treed.

It shows us the direction she's in, about 79 yards.

Nice and close.

Let█s go see what she's got this time.

Get em█ Remi.

There it sits right there.

That's a big raccoon.

You want to shoot them?

Why don't you shoot it?

You have a good angle over there?

Yeah, I can see it right in my light right here.

All right.

I█m going to shoot.

He's hanging on my shooting one more time.

There it goes.

There you go.

Nice job.

I don't hear any squalling, so I think... No I think he came out dead.

I think that first shot really killed him.

He just got kind of hung up in that tree.

The veteran dog knows how to fight a raccoon.

They'll go for the neck, but a young puppy just getting learning.

They'll bite the back end and kind of drag them around.

Okay.

Remi dead.

Well the dog did a great job.

We were able to get in here, locate it, and you put a good shot on it.

We█re on a piece of property where the landowner knows there are a lot of raccoons here.

He's a turkey hunter.

Would like to see a couple of them removed.

What we're trying to do is to eradicate coons to increase our Turkey population because they're destroying our nest and stuff right now.

So that's what we like to do.

Get them out of there.

They are major nest raiders.

Yes.

Everything has its place, but everything has to be kind of kept in balance and not a whole lot of predators for raccoons.

So every now and then, it's good to kind of keep them in check and that helps your turkey eggs so that you have a good healthy flock.

Exactly.

Well, I always say at the end of every show, always ask permission and thank the landowner.

So thank you for letting us come out here today.

Yes, sir.

No problem.

Are you wanting to preserve that trophy buck that you took this year, but you don't have the wall space?

Well, a Euro-Mount may be your best option.

So I'm here with Chase Wallen today, and we're here to demonstrate a way that a person can preserve a deer hunt without spending a ton of money on a taxidermist.

Yeah, absolutely.

The euro mounts a very cost effective method.

And the euro mount is all about removing hair and flesh and getting it down to just literally bone.

Yeah, correct.

Bone and antler right?

Yeah, yeah.

You're going to remove the flesh, you're going to clean the skull.

And essentially, there you go.

Well, it just so happened that one of our videographers, Jamison Standard, took a really nice buck and he is going to allow us to demonstrate this process today.

This is a way that we can showcase exactly how to do this for someone who may want to try it.

We're going to go ahead and get started.

So what you're going to need is a set of sharp knives, some rubber gloves to protect your hands, couple pairs of needle nose pliers.

I like to use a large pair and a small pair.

The same with a set of flathead, screwdrivers, gun cleaning picks, peroxide developer paste, some small paint brushes and some cups to hold your peroxide developer.

Clear dishwashing liquid, super glue, electrical tape.

And then, of course, your pot and your pan and your burner.

The first step is we're going to remove all the hide, the ears, the nose, and then some of the meat that we can get off.

So biggest thing you want is a boning knife that's got a little bit of flexibility to it.

Just so you can get in and around all the intricate parts of the head.

So when you're doing this, you really want to be careful with your knife cuts and you do not want to cut down into the bone.

We're just going to keep peeling the hide down away from the mouth.

You want to be careful around here so you don't cut or scrape up the teeth and you're just going to keep continuing to work this hide all the way down.

And you do not have to worry about taking this hide off in one piece if you need to.

It's perfectly fine to section it out, peel a piece, and then start on another one section out and keep peeling all the way down to the nose.

At this point we have all the hide removed.

So what we're going to do is go through and remove as much excess meat off the skull as possible.

At this point you don't want to use a whole lot of downward pressure on the nose because you don't want to shatter these delicate bones.

You want to go in and remove the tongue and the eyes.

They do boil out if you'd rather do that, it just helps to get that hot water down into the cavity quicker.

Where you want your water temperature is just a really low simmer.

You absolutely do not need a rolling boil for this.

Every 30 to 45 minutes you need to go back and check your water temperature and your water level as this will evaporate over time.

Okay.

We're in about hour three, just about ready to take it out and pressure wash it.

Around our two we pulled this out, put it on the table and pulled the majority of the meat off of the needle nose pliers.

It's a really important step.

We removed the jawbone and got off as much as we possibly could to allow it to continue cooking.

In the last hour, we put it back in and as you can see, whenever we removed all that meat, it drastically reduced the weight on the front end and causes it to tip forward.

We rigged up a little apparatus to help hold it up.

You may need to do the same.

Prior to fresh washing, I left to remove the two lower nose bones just because they're so fragile and I don't want to break them.

If you get them removed and dried, it's easy to glue back in later.

Before we get started, what I like to do is put down the towel, just to kind of protect the skull and to keep anything from blowing up against it.

I also like to set it up against a hard surface to prevent it from spinning around while you pressure washing it.

And another thing, I like to wear some knee high rubber boots.

There's going to be a bunch of nasty debris fly off of this and you don't want to get it on you.

Now that we've got the front sprayed off, what we're going to do is flip it over, pad up the bottom really well where these really delicate nose bones are going to be.

Stick the end of the pressure washer in the spinal column hole and flush out the brain matter.

Okay, so now we've got all the meat sprayed off and it's on to the next step.

Sometimes a pressure washer can miss small pieces of meat, especially in the nasal cavity.

So it's a good idea to go in and remove any from the skull.

So now we're going to soak the skull in a pot of water with some clear dishwashing soap.

This helps remove any oils or grease from the skull.

Absolutely make sure it's clear.

You don't have to do this, but it helps speed the process if you have a heat lamp next to the container.

The warm water helps to draw the oils out faster.

Let this soak for 2 to 3 weeks.

Change in the water every 3 to 4 days, maybe a week.

Or if it looks like it gets cloudy.

So we've removed the skull from the water and let it completely dry out.

Prior to this we went in and we pre widened this section of the nose bone and the corresponding section of the skull just so that it will make glue up a little bit easier, and no color will bleed through.

Next step, we're going to attach the nose bones with the glue, and then we're going to whiten the entire skull with the cream developed peroxide paste.

So with these nose pieces, make sure and dry fit it first prior to putting the glue on it just in case a piece of bone has shifted.

Or maybe something's out of line.

You can go in with some sandpaper or maybe a fine file, file it down where it meets up a little bit easier.

This one's meeting pretty good, so we're going to go ahead and glue it.

What I like to use is just a normal super glue.

You want to use something that's not water soluble and not heat soluble.

That way you don't have to have any kind of worries or or anything with it coming apart on you, but you'll put just a dab of glue where it's going to meet the skull and then I'll put a dab glue on the inside of the nose bone.

And it is super glue.

So you do have to act pretty quickly.

We're just going to hold it until it dries.

It█s time for the other side.

Now that the nose bones are dry, we're going to go ahead and apply the peroxide cream developer paste.

Prior to doing that, a good idea is to take just some simple electrical tape and wrap the base of your antlers.

That way none of the developer paste gets up onto the colored antler and you don't have to worry about it bleaching it out.

And I'll have to go 3 to 4 inches up the antler.

So now that we got those wrapped, we're going to go ahead and apply the paste.

What we're using here is a peroxide cream developer paste You can pick this up from any salon or even Amazon.

Today we've got 40% by volume, which is about 12% peroxide, which is as strong as you can get over the counter.

We█re going to go ahead and just apply a thin coat of the paste over the top of the entire skull.

It helps to have a small brush so you can get down into the nooks and crannies in this cartilage and get the developer paste all through it.

So I also work to get this really good up in between each individual tooth.

The teeth typically hold a little bit more oil and they'll be a little bit more discolored than the rest of the bone.

So they may take two or three applications.

Once you have all this applied, let it dry 6 to 8 hours.

Overnight is best.

Once it's dried, you need to go in and maybe take a stiff bristle brush and rinse it under hot water and scrub all the remaining peroxide off.

Then once it's dried, you can evaluate it.

If it's to the point of being as white as you want, good.

If not, all you have to do is go back and reapply the paste and continue the process until you get it to where you want it.

A European mount takes a little bit of time and it's a few steps, but it's a great, inexpensive and very memorable way to commemorate your harvest.

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

Here we have Kaylee Singleton with a impressive buck that was taken on the opening day in Lincoln County.

Nice job.

Here we have Maddox Weiner with his first fish ever, caught while fishing at Boltz Lake with his pawpaw.

Six year old Henry Litchfield caught this bass, which took two hands to hold.

It was caught at a private pond in Callaway County.

Nice job.

Seven year old Blake Williams knows how to spend an early morning in September squirrel hunting.

Here he is pictured with his second squirrel ever.

Check out this impressive buck in velvet that was taken by Justin Duvall.

This deer was taken in Clinton County.

Here we have Tripp Burke with a nice largemouth bass that was caught in Nolin Lake while fishing off the dock.

Nice job.

Check out this huge fish caught by eight year old Fisher.

This is a 35 and a half inch flathead catfish.

Nice job.

Here we have Georgia with her very first large mouth ever.

A giant that was caught in a stream in Shelby County.

Nice job.

Here we have John Morgan Henry's limit of ducks that was taken in Henry County on a public land hunt.

He even got a bird with a leg band.

These birds were taken with his Remington shotgun that was made in early 1900s.

Check out this beautiful largemouth bass that was caught by Melissa Lockard from a neighborhood lake in Georgetown, Kentucky.

Nice fish.

I don't know about you, but October is hands down my favorite month here in Kentucky.

Make sure you make time 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 hope to see you in the woods or on the water.

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