Hello and welcome to Kentucky Afield.

I'm your host, Chad Miles.

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

This week we're going to hit the woods with wildlife biologists as they discuss how available food sources impact wildlife movement.

Then we're going to head out and learn a little bit about the Virginia big-eared bat.

But first fall hunting seasons are almost here.

That means it's time for some fast flying dove hunting action.

It's September the 1st.

And as usual, on September 1st, it's hot.

But if you're an outdoors person here in the state of Kentucky, you know exactly what that means.

September the 1st, always the opening day of dove season here in state of Kentucky.

And I am lucky enough to be invited to a old friend of mine family farm out here in the Mount Washington Spencer County area.

And we've got a good old fashioned dove shoot going on.

He's got quite a bit of habitat planted out here, a lot of sunflowers, and he's been seeing quite a few birds sitting down and waiting for them to come.

They ought to be any minute now.

It's time to get loaded up.

And for me, this is kind of the official kickoff to the hunting season.

I know that the squirrel season has been in.

I haven't been out yet, but when September the 1st comes in, dove season opens up.

It rolls right into all the other hunting seasons.

And I can't wait to one shoot some doves and then secondly, be in that deer stand next weekend.

They're starting to fly more and more.

I've already seen three now.

We are still in the process of getting all of our hunters out in the field.

So we're letting birds fly right over top of us, letting them get used to us being setting here.

And we're not shooting yet.

I think they got 1 or 2 more trips on the UTV to get everybody out.

Then the game plan is going to change dramatically.

Well, it looks like our last hunters have now gotten to their hay bales, so we got a thumbs up.

So there's no more free passes.

The next bird that comes through in range, It's time to start shooting.

Right here.

That was a good shot.

Man.

They█re turning.

There's 5 or 6 in that group though.

Here comes one.

Get ready.

Well, first dove of the year.

They're starting to fly a little bit better.

We've been seeing them scurting and now they're kind of crossing the field, so hopefully it's about to get real good.

There we go.

I tell you what, if you've never dove hunted, it's a lot of shooting, a lot of fun, a lot of friendship.

And they're also fantastic on the grill.

So the limit here is 15.

So we got a lot of room to make up.

This is number one.

Oh look I got one on the fence right there.

Came in and took my seat while I was retrieving my bird.

A bird literally flew in and landed right here as I was walking back up.

When the bird come off the wire, it went lower.

Because this hillside is rolling, even though a bird looks like it's the appropriate height off the ground, you got to be very cautious in the direction you're shooting.

That shot would have been right toward that couple setting down there.

I've got perfect avenue to shoot this way or this way.

There's no reason for me to ever need to take a shot dead, left or right, unless it's straight above me.

Wow.

That was a ton of birds.

They're starting to really come up and fly right now.

Got that one.

All right.

That was a fun bird right there.

Because I got I got a little shook up because I watched it fly toward me so long.

And trying to decide when to take the shot.

Put it down, though.

Let's go pick it up.

Oh, man.

I have birds just flying right over me.

Have my decoy out.

Brought him right in.

Starting to fly a lot faster now.

A lot more birds.

Got him.

All right.

We got them down in the front and the back.

Nice job.

Coming to you.

Pretty birds.

Tasty birds too.

I'll tell you what.

If you never had dove, my favorite way is to grill them.

But there's a lot of different ways that you can eat dove.

And really, most of the things you can do with chicken, you just don't want to overcook them.

But, if you ever had them, they█re kind of a darker red meat and, wrapped in bacon and grilled, probably my favorite way.

They are absolutely delicious.

Right into the sun.

Oh, right there.

She just picked that one up.

Thank you.

Man, I appreciate you, I gotcha.

Thank you.

There go.

There, another one.

You got them left to right.

All right.

Getting close.

I think I need 1 or 2 more birds.

Having a limit.

I tell you what.

Last year we went out and - Come here, come here, Indy.

Come here, Indy.

Come here, Indy.

I got one left.

How many you got so far today?

I got six.

A lot of times I get asked by new hunters.

Hey, I'm interested in buying my first gun.

What should I consider for hunting?

And, you know, a lot of people will give you all the different calibers of rifles, but probably a 20 gauge shotgun.

You can do all your small game hunting.

I rabbit hunt, dove hunt, squirrel hunt... too close, too low.

I've killed turkeys with this.

You can shoot slugs through it.

A 20 gauge shotgun is probably about as versatile as any gun you can use for hunting, because you can hunt everything from deer to doves.

And, it's a perfect, perfect gun to get introduced into hunting.

Rabbit hunting, squirrel hunting, duck hunting, dove hunting, deer hunting, turkey hunting.

Pretty much covers the gamut here in Kentucky.

Let's grab that bird.

That's number 15.

Well, I can't think of a better way to spend September the 1st.

You know, we had some new hunters out here today, saw some good dog work.

We got our limit.

It's time to go put them on the grill.

You may have heard of the term mast crop survey.

Now, let's go find out what that is and how it may help you become more successful this fall.

Today we're out here at Cleber Wildlife Management area and any day that I can get out and spend a day in the field with biologists, I always know I'm gonna learn something.

What am I gonna learn about today?

Yeah.

So today we're going to go on a mast survey.

So essentially we're surveying the fruits of hardwood tree species here at Cleber WMA.

So mast is essentially those high calorie groceries that the animals that we like to see and chase recreationally are keying in on as well.

What trees are we going to be looking for today?

Well, we're looking for different species of white oak, red oak, hickory and beech.

Hey, I'm excited to see how you do this, how you rank a tree, how you locate these trees.

Let's let's take off.

Let's take a walk to the woods.

Hey, I can't think of a better way to spend the day to walk through the woods and learn a few things and hopefully put that to use to make yourself a better hunter this fall.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Let's do it.

So is this one, Cody?

R-1.

So, Zach, you've got a red canvas spray paint there.

What you're doing is you're identifying this tree as a tree in our survey.

hundreds of farms just like yours today That's right.

where they're sitting around Tell me what what you're going to put on there.

Yeah.

So we're just marking it with red paint Absolutely, absolutely.

because it's a red oak.

It's a species of red oak.

And it is the first tree of 25 red oaks that we█ll be surveying today.

So you've got a red line around it and a one.

Yep.

So we, we often put these metal tags on the trees, but as you can see, this one's been plinked a few times with a .22 and they wear off over time.

So obviously this is on a wildlife management area where we're able to do this for research purposes, but this one's already painted, but we touch them up and we use different color paint for the different species.

So, their first dove day, which is exciting.

so red for red oak, that was pretty obvious.

So if you're on a WMA and you're I can't think of a better way to start off spending some time hunting and you see a red light around it and you're looking at a red oak.

That's right.

and we are exactly downwind of those dove breasts White for white oak and blue for beech and orange for hickory.

that are cooking on that grill.

I say, let's go get a plate.

So the cool thing about the app is it's real time.

If we have cell signal, it submits the data to the cloud instantly, if not at stores and on board until we go back in cell reception.

But I'm going to this Red Oak one.

I click here.

Yeah, I'm clicking that, yes, we visited the tree.

I'm going to update the location information then I can hit update and now better accuracy.

My phone is better, more accurate than GPS.

Oh, that's awesome.

So now that is good and the tree is alive.

I want to quickly measure the diameter of it too.

Okay, so this is DBH: diameter at breast height.

Four and a half feet off the ground.

Okay.

Just bring it around there.

The mark should be right in here somewhere.

Right here.

So.

So 24, it's not a regular tape.

So it's calibrated to to measure the diameter of the tree.

And so now that we've got the tree information, updated that into our survey, we're going to do our rapid assessment of the mast.

Essentially, the amount of this tree that could be bearing mast or acorns is actually bearing mast or acorns.

Okay.

And so essentially, you know, I'm going to take my binoculars and look at the very tips of all these branches and think in my mind, you know, of those tips that could be bearing mast, what percentage are being mast.

And so I set a timer on my watch here for 30 seconds.

I'm just going to try to get this whole entire crown here of this nice big red oak.

We might be able to see some acorns just with our naked eye, but really with these binoculars, this is our most important tool of mast survey.

And if you want to, you can follow along and we can compare notes.

Yeah, okay, I'll set my time or now.

And we're looking.

Okay, we're done.

So first impressions.

I saw a lot of acorns.

Oh, about.

Yeah, yeah.

80, 85.

80, 85?

What were you thinking, Chad?

Well, I would say, you know, 60 to 70% of what I saw, but I'm sure there's my eyes are not trained for it yet, so I'm sure you guys are going to see more than me.

I was thinking 75, honestly.

Although we had kind of three different numbers there.

You know, they were pretty close together.

And, you know, we'll take these data, put them in our phone and the way we analyze them, is so this is one tree of 25 red oak group on this survey route.

There's 40 odd other routes in the state with 25 red oak trees apiece, 25 white oak trees apiece, 25 hickory trees apiece and 25 beech nut trees apiece.

And so, you know, even if our numbers are slightly off by 10%, a lot of that washes out by the hundreds and thousands of trees that we have from east to west, north to south in the state of Kentucky.

So this is something that's going to take place every single year.

Can you start predicting what years are going to have more mast crops than others based on some trends?

Yeah, for sure.

So it's really important if you█re thinking about setting something like this up on your own private property or just looking at the same tree through time.

It is very important to keep that same tree fixed over time.

That's why we mark all our trees and stuff like that.

And then yes, you can step back and look, okay, you know, this is going to be we've had a couple of boom years.

You've got to be kind of expecting a bust year or a poor year at some point in time, because, again, these trees fluctuate through time.

They've developed that strategy over time to try to get ahead of the nut predators and things like the squirrels that are constantly getting up there and hitting the nuts or the other animals that, you know, off the ground and stuff like that.

So a tactic that these trees have developed over time, again, will probably given the trees a lot of credit on that.

But they will have a bust year every now and then.

And so that'll be preceded by likely a boom year.

Right.

And so they're going up and down through time.

It really highlights the critical importance of oak trees in our habitats here.

We can't afford to lose this species, so anything we can do to manage our oaks is is important.

So our next tree, how far away is it?

Should be in here.

If I recall, it's right there.

You see the red paint?

Oh, yeah, right there it is.

Paint looks pretty good.

Tag still on it.

So it's 18.6.

Looks like 19.9.

15.8.

Five.

Well, guys, I know you're much quicker doing this when you don't have company, so I appreciate you kind of showing me exactly what you're doing.

I'm going to let you guys finish out your survey today, but tell me, obviously, it's very beneficial for you guys because you're managing forests for a long period of time.

How does a person that wants to come out here and pursue or view wildlife use the information you guys are collecting today to help them increase their chances?

I would say it could be a really good way to get to know your property, what you've got on it.

And you know, if you've not walked around, take some time and identify some oaks and hickory trees, beech trees if you've got them.

And that's part of the fun I would say is, you know, getting familiar with the property and finding where the good trees are and maybe let that inform where you go hunting.

So if you wanted to find this information specific to a WMA that you hunt, it█s located where?

Yeah, that's a great question, Chad.

So Zach and I will go back after all the statewide surveys are done and run a whole bunch of analyzes to try to represent the data in a way that's useful to sports people.

And so some of those ways that we do that, first of all, we put all that stuff on our website: fw.ky.gov, just search “mast survey”, and this report will be there.

And so find a WMA that's close, either the WMA you want to hunt could be on there or a WMA that's close to where you want to go hunt.

A way that I would use that if I was going to maybe scout an area or something like that is I'd find my area or an area close to it on the mast survey report and then look and see what tree species are doing really well and what you species are doing kind of not as good, right?

And so if White Oaks are bumper on Kleber WMA where we're standing right now, I would really consider, you know, identifying the White Oaks and maybe going and looking at those places first when I go to scout for, say, whitetail hunting or fall turkey hunting.

Well, I'll tell you what, I█ve appreciated your time today.

Hopefully next day you get to do this and it's 65 degrees outside instead of 90.

But hey, the works got to be done.

And I appreciate you guys for doing it.

You bet.

Thanks so much.

Thank you so much.

The Virginia big bat is a federally endangered species that can be found right here in the state of Kentucky.

And our wildlife biologists are working hard to monitor and protect them.

Virginia Big-eared bats are our most endangered mammal we have in Kentucky.

As best we can tell from the information we have available to us.

Statewide, there's only somewhere between 3 and 4000 individuals currently.

The biologists here at Kentucky Fish and Wildlife spend a lot of time managing Virginia Big-eared bat the last year as a part of our project with Virginia big-eared bats.

We discovered a new, or at least newly known to us, maternity site for the species.

It's a pretty sizable site.

It holds.

It's maybe a little bit over 10% of all the Virginia big-eared bats we know of in the state.

We were concerned that people could unknowingly go into the cave at the wrong time of year and disturb the bats and actually cause the population to decline.

So at that point, Kentucky Fish and Wildlife worked with the Daniel Boone National Forest, with US Fish and Wildlife, with the Kentucky Natural Land Trust, and with the experts in actually erecting these cave gates to get the site protected using using a cave gate.

I need a piece- a sill, S-I-l-l, 78in.

Yes.

When I say gate it, we're erecting these barriers that will allow the bat to move in and out of the cave freely.

But that restricts human access.

Human disturbance.

And most of the time, it's, unknowingly disturbing these bats can actually have a negative impact on the population.

So if we get a lot of human disturbance at a cave that's used as a hibernaculum for example, while the bats are hibernating, the humans walking around will disturb them.

They wake up, they'll start depleting fat reserves, and they'll actually starve to death in the wintertime.

In the summertime, if it's a maternity site for a species, you disturb the mothers with their pups.

Sometimes the pups, if you go at the wrong time of year, are unable to fly at this time, they can actually fall down to the cave floor to their death.

So when we put these cave gates up, or barriers up, it's there as a way of managing, a very small number of the caves that we have in the state that that are the ones that are our most important cave resources.

We utilized our Kentucky Wild program to pay for a portion of the gate.

And in conjunction with that, the imperiled bat conservation Fund, administered by the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust, paid for a portion of the project as well.

So we were able to leverage Kentucky wild funds that are donated money from our Kentucky Wild members to actually get this site protected.

What we want to do is put in these management strategies with, putting cave gates up.

But then we also want to continue monitoring the sites to make sure that the populations are at least holding steady.

Although we would obviously prefer to have the the populations increase in size.

A tool that we use for monitoring populations.

We can go in with thermal binoculars and monitor emergence at night and just get a count of how many bats are coming out in order to collect the most data from a site and to really see how population is doing.

We'll use a harp trap.

A harp trap is a metal frame with monofilament fishing line that you buy at a bait store strung vertically.

And the idea is, as the bats emerge out of the cave, they kind of bump into the fishing line that we've got pulled real tight, and it makes them fall into a little cloth bag at the bottom of the trap.

As soon as they hit the bag at the bottom, we have biologists on site that pull the bat out, and that's when we really start collecting some good information on is this a site used by males or females?

Sometimes, both.

Is it a maternity site where we have both mothers and pups there?

What's the reproductive condition and the body condition of the bats that we're catching.

And that's when we're also able to put in bands on bats where we can do these long term data sets.

That's essentially a way of marking the bat so that we can collect trend data on individuals.

We're able to band these bats in the summertime.

We'll go in in the winter time to do the bat count.

And as we see bats that have a band on them will pull that bat, look at the band, report that, and we're able to find migration trend on species.

So by attaching these bands, we're able to start getting these links between where they're spending their summers and where they're spending their winters.

In addition, we're able to look year after year and see how long some of these bats live, which can actually be up to 20 years.

So by not only doing the monitoring that we've talked about, but also installing these cave gates at appropriate sites.

We're able to monitor and hopefully recover the species long term.

One of the things we want to make sure of is to protect the populations that we know of.

And then beyond that, once we get these sites protected, then we can work into some of the habitat work that needs to happen out on the landscape to make sure that this species is recovered.

Now let's check in and see who else has been out having fun.

And this week's ones that didn't get away.

Ten year old Ben Dodd got out and took advantage of the summer squirrel season and bagged his first squirrels ever.

He took these three in Jessamine County.

Nice job.

Here we have Hannah Beauchamp with a nice 25 inch catfish that she caught on a crappie jig and 6 pound test line.

Nice job.

Here we have ten year old Emerson Mings with our first grade squirrels ever that she took with her dad in Henry County.

Congratulations.

Check out Easton Terry with this nice largemouth bass that he caught in a private farm pond in Breathitt County.

Congratulations.

Landon Burris was all thumbs up.

As he shows us his first bass that he caught on green River Lake.

This week, dove season opens on September the 1st statewide here in the state of Kentucky.

Hopefully you have plans to hit the field 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, that I hope to see you in the woods or on the water.