This week on Kentucky Afield, we're launching the boat from a brand new ramp in West Louisville, then running up river to search for hybrid striped bass.

Next, we head west and try our hand at hunting the state's largest rabbits.

Then, we'll learn a little about Kentucky's hunting history by checking out the once popular rollover sneak boat.

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.

You may be surprised to know that the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife has an engineering division.

Let's find out more about how they may impact your next fishing or hunting trip.

We're out here today in western Louisville, right on the banks of the Ohio River at a brand new boat ramp.

Interestingly enough, I have Michael Scott here, who is the director of engineering information and several other things right here.

This is one of the projects that you guys worked on.

This is a brand new boat ramp right here in western Louisville.

Yeah.

It█s one of our engineering projects.

And so I am the division director of the Engineering Infrastructure and Technology Division for the Department.

This project started a long time ago, but actual construction was started back in spring of 2020 and we started the earthwork and all the construction concrete work to get this boat ramp in place.

And then it was a partnership with the city of Louisville.

They came in behind us and we built the boat ramp portion.

They built the parking lot portion, and they finished that up in the spring of 2021.

This is a really interesting project because, you know, the Ohio River offers so much opportunity.

There you go.

Oh, she just barely hooked too.

Got a double.

Haven't been here 20 minutes.

Ohio River Catfish at it█s finest right there.

But you█ve got to be all access water, right?

This is right below the falls and it's on a stretch where In Kentucky I don't know how far down you got to go to get to the next boat ramp.

Kentucky side, there's not another boat ramp for a long ways.

And this is excellent access for our largest population city.

And so it's this perfect fit to get the people on the water that's close to them.

We're going to launch the boat here and we're going to make our way up.

You know, it's early October it█s a good time of year to catch hybrid bass.

Yeah.

Now it takes special precautions.

We're going to be, life-jacketed up from the time we leave.

I'll tell you what.

If you're going to come down here and do this, first couple of times, you probably need to come with somebody's got a lot of experience.

This is going to be fun.

We're going to fish to hopefully right up about dark and you know I know they█ve been catching some big fish.

Sounds good.

Looking forward to it.

That's what we're going to catch fish.

I got one.

You got him?

Does it feel like a good one?

It looks like a good one.

That didn█t take long.

Yeah.

There he is.

Perfect.

That█s why you get the net under them.

That was, that was awesome.

I'll tell you what, we just got up here, made a couple of casts.

You caught that one.

I've been bumped a time or two.

Look at that.

What a beautiful fish.

That's awesome.

Probably 5 minutes or so.

You're just throwing a, just a fluke?

Yeah.

And just a normal zoom fluke.

Nothing special.

Four inch fluke.

And right up there.

Now, listen, this is not something for the faint of heart.

This is a situation where you've got to have jackets on.

You don't know the river and know exactly what you're doing.

You could really get hurt.

Yeah.

And I tell you what, this is a healthy fish.

If you were out on the lake for a hybrid, you go,” This is a pretty good fish.” Man, I'll tell you what.

This is probably what do you think, Four pounder?

Yeah.

They get really, really big down here.

You wouldn't surprise me one bit if we don't catch a six, eight, nine, ten pounder.

Very possible.

Well, nice job, Michael.

Awesome.

Oh, here we go.

Oh man, you add one: how hard these things fight.

And then you add this current.

you got it.

Looks like a brother or sister to exactly what you caught.

Yeah.

A little smaller.

Man, I tell you what though There is absolutely very few things more exciting than a hybrid bass in heavy current, catching one of those.

I don't know if it█s true or not but I've heard they're one of the hardest fighting fish.

Pound for pound in Freshwater.

Oh, I don't doubt it.

And I'm throwing a little fluke.

Almost the same thing with a little green on the end.

We went with the bedazzled head because that's all they had.

I really don't think in this current it really matters.

As long as they like it, I like it.

They seem to be liking it right now.

Oh, I saw that.

I got him.

You got him up here in The Current.

I saw your line bounce.

I can█t tell what I got.

He█s swimming towards me maybe.

Doesn't feel too big, but- Oh, that's a good one.

That's a good one.

It is just swimming towards me.

Oh, got it.

Got him And he's not happy about it.

What a joy.

How much fun is this?

It's a blast.

Hard to beat.

It is hard to beat.

Now, it takes a little work.

It comes with some inherent risk.

It takes some education.

And, you know, what you can't see is that this trolling motor is not able to hold us in this place.

We literally have a boat jockey driving us to keep us in the right position.

Hey, nice fish.

Thanks.

Let█s catch some more.

So, Michael, obviously boat ramps are a big part of what your engineering department does, but what other projects do you guys work on that sportsmen and women as they travel the state may not realize that the Fish and Wildlife has an engineering department that is responsible for that.

Yeah, there's a wide variety of projects that we cover and oversee.

A lot of the shooting ranges we have on our WMA█s were constructed by our engineering division over the years and we maintain those and keep those up and doing any renovations, repairs we need to those.

I mean, just simple parking lots.

So we've recently built a new parking lot on Palmer Road Access at Taylorsville Lake WMA for spring time white bass run.

And it's just a lot of variety of things that we find ourselves getting into.

And some of it is behind the scenes that you might not think of us being involved with, that our division is the technology side of it, and that's if you go online, buy your hunting fishing license, you're using a program that was developed in-house by our IT staff to purchase that license.

So they've got, I think, 90 plus systems, some of them public facing, some of them just support the mission of the department.

So if you hunt and fish in the state of Kentucky, you're in some form or fashion, you're interacting with the engineering department, with the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Somehow.

Yeah, the simple aspect of buying a license or tele-checking an animal or launching a boat, all that.

You guys are involved in some form.

Oh!

you got it?

Yup.

All right.

I think he wanted my rod.

Oh, yeah.

There we go.

They all look like they're the exact same year.

Yeah, it's a little smaller here too, but man, I'll tell you one thing.

They hit there in that current and they take off It's just “Hold on.” Just a beautiful fish.

I got one right there on the wall.

Oh, yeah.

Nice.

You were right on the wall, huh?

That's right where I just got hit too literally like- I thought I was hung up I was so close.

I got the net ready whenever you get it in.

Oh, he's running now.

Coming up.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

A little bit bigger.

Yeah, definitely bigger.

Here you go, man.

That's a good one.

Nice.

I tell you what, you take a fish that powerful, you think about all the bait that's coming through there and it's all distressed and disoriented.

That fish is strong enough to go right where it wants and chase it right up against that wall.

You literally caught that how close the wall?

Right on that wall, maybe two feet from it.

Two feet?

Yeah.

So you gave it a nice, easy piece of bait, nice prey, and then took advantage.

Sure did.

Great fish, man.

Thanks.

Surf fishing.

Oh, here we go.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

There we go.

Still a pretty good fish.

Man, they are so aggressive.

Look at that.

What a beautiful, beautiful fish.

I'll tell you what, Mike.

Think about this fish started in a fish hatchery.

Yeah.

Because these hybrids, they don't reproduce naturally.

It's pretty cool.

Yeah, definitely fun to get out here and put one of our projects to use and definitely hope to make it back out sometime.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Hey, I really appreciate you coming out today.

All right.

I enjoyed it.

Absolute blast.

Let's get this fish back in.

The opening day of rabbit season here in Kentucky is right around the corner.

Now let's head west in search of Kentucky's largest rabbit, the swamp rabbit.

We're here in Graves County getting ready to a rabbit hunt.

So I'm here with Paul.

Tell me a little about the dogs you brought today.

I got a big male tricolored, his name█s smoke, and I got him as a pup.

And then I got a little tricolored female.

Her name is Tess.

And then I got a blue tick male in here named Trump.

He's only ten months old.

He's doing really good this year.

How many days a week you usually run these dogs?

If It's real hot, two times a week, but mainly 2 to 4 times a week.

Every week.

It don't matter.

July or August, year round.

This part of the state, a lot of times you can find both cotton tails and swamp rabbits.

This peace of property we█re on, what do we expect to find here?

Mainly swamp rabbits.

Okay.

You got a buddy that came with you also brought some dogs, right?

Yeah.

Let's go get those dogs out as well.

All right.

So, Troy, how many dogs you bring today?

I brought four today.

This is Echo.

This is Jeanie.

This is Festus and this is Leon.

Just a fast-footed, strong dog.

That█s got all day hunt, you know?

I look forward to seeing how he's going to finish.

He's doing a really good job.

We've put in a lot of time to get him ready for a hunt like this.

I'm excited to get out here.

Hopefully these dogs are going to get a rabbit up pretty quick.

All right.

Here we go.

They're all taking off of that one dog who just opened.

Oh, they just saw it run over there.

Let█s get a move on.

He█re he comes up to you, Brian.

Shoot him.

Shoot him.

Shoot him, Cody!

Good shot.

And it looks like they may have one down.

Now, this is not a big swamper, this is a smaller sized swamp rabbit.

This could very easily be confused for a cottontail.

But this is what we're going to be seeing a lot of today.

Hopefully some bigger ones.

You know what?

They get too much bigger, four of them turns into a load.

Well, nice job.

Nice shot.

I believe you could have shot that one off the porch.

Almost did.

Looks like there's a bunch of scat on this log.

This is a sure sign that you got swamp rabbits, isn█t it?

This is a good sign that there█s swamp rabbits.

Sometimes you catch a big hill rabbit, jump on a stump or something and do this, but nine times out of ten, this is what a swamp rabbit will do, you know.

He tries to get up out of the water and use the bathroom.

Another thing that you can look at, the rabbit will eat the bottom of the trees, the bark off the trees.

This is a good sign that this place has got a lot of swamp rabbits in it.

They're working it back.

They went almost 600 yards and they're working their way back.

Pretty big run of a swamper.

Here it comes, coming straight to you.

There It goes.

There we go.

There we go.

Good job.

Did you get it?

About time!

I was about to start yelling, “The british are coming!” That rabbit had a lot of heat right off the bat.

You know, he was getting sight chased hard.

Oh yeah.

Golly, what a rabbit.

Now there's a swamper.

Well they're finishing the track up, he killed a rabbit.

We like to let them finish the track, show them it█s dead before we go on to another rabbit.

How far out are they, Paul?

310.

310.

They're out of hearing distance, but they'll be bringing him back here in a little bit.

People who either don't use electronics or they really are not paying attention to how far the dogs run on a normal cottontail.

And you call them hill rabbits, right?

Yeah.

About 200 is kind of normal wouldn█t you say?

200 on a cottontail.

Yeah.

If you get a hill rabbit that goes around 300, you really start thinking, you know what's going on.

At 375.

Swamp rabbits they got a lot of different advantages over a dog or a human.

The cypress trees, they're hollowed out at the bottom and they crawl up in there and you can't get them out.

Rather than go into a hole which they get full of water, they'll just go into a tree.

Just anything to get a dog or coyote or bobcat off of it.

They're coming back.

That's what I like most about it.

Whenever they pick him back up and they just start hammering.

That's the best part.

You see it, shoot it.

There you go.

That's his first swamper.

That's your first one?

Yeah, first swamper.

Fantastic, man.

There it is.

There you go.

Oh, that one dog almost caught it.

Here he comes!

Here he comes, Cody!

We're going to let him run.

Y'all better be ready.

Here he comes.

Just got me a little cottontail rabbit.

Shot over a little bit the first time.

Man, what a great race!

That dog ran that rabbit a long way, didn█t he?

Yeah, probably a good three or 400 yards.

Yeah, for a cottontail that was a pretty good race.

But now we've kind of come out of some real thick, swampy areas over here in more fields.

So over here, we're going to get into more of these style rabbits.

Okay.

Hey, nice shot.

Thank you, man.

Hey, we've got a lot of good looking area right here to hunt.

I think we're getting ready to get into it.

Find him, find him, find him.

That rabbit knows that this is field all the way around it.

This is a little peninsula.

It comes out, so he's looking for a hole to get in there.

And those dogs are trying to push it.

There it is.

There it is, coming at you.

Too far away They had this rabbit in here and that rabbit came out, but it was out of range.

But I've been carrying this gun all day.

It was time to shoot.

There he goes.

Get him.

There he rolls.

Hey there█s two.

There█s two.

So I think they just got that rabbit, but someone yelled “there's two”.

Good shot.

So I think they've got that second rabbit.

It looks like they just took it.

So that was great, man.

I tell you what, to the dogs, getting that log jam, that's probably the safest place in this county.

They got down there in a very, very bottom and bumped that rabbit out and lo and behold, jumped a second rabbit.

Looks like we got shots at both of them.

Man, that is some great dog work right there.

Well I'll tell you what, this was a great experience because we got to come down here today and hunt two completely different terrains that held different species of rabbits.

You guys are very passionate about your dog work and today was a lot of fun watching these dogs run a lot of distance.

We had a great time.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Kentucky has a rich history in both hunting and fishing.

And many different techniques were developed right here in the state of Kentucky, including a technique called sneak boat hunting, using a roll over boat.

Randy, I've heard a lot about these boats called a rollover boat.

Right.

But I never thought that I'd get an opportunity to see one in action.

You know, before World War Two and right after the war, most of the duck hunting that I was aware of, you know my father's era and all.

They didn't hunt with decoys.

They floated on a river and snuck up on ducks.

And these were sort of the ultimate sneak boat for the Ohio River.

It rolled on its side and once it was rolled, it looked like a log floated down the river.

It was especially effective in high water.

You just kept it rolled over and floated along looking like a log and the ducks weren't afraid of you.

When you rolled it back up and then you would shoot.

We█d be right on.

Right on it where he█s suppose to be.

I got the first shot and you got him when he█s right out there.

So you don't roll the boat on its side until you physically see ducks, right?

Well, most of the time, if I got fast water I keep it rolled over about halfway and just drift.

But if it's a slow river, our river anymore is like a big lake.

What I will do, I will row, and whoever is in the front of the boat will use a pair of binoculars.

And when they see ducks then I tend to back in and move to the back seat where I got my wide paddle and I usually have it stuck up in the gunnel.

So it's really easy for me to get too.

And once I roll the boat over then I just gently paddle down on them and and they don't.

Part of this is about not being in a hurry, which I kind of like.

Yeah.

If you if there's a drift running in the river, if you paddle faster than the drift, you scare the duck.

You look unnatural.

Yeah.

So you want to look natural, and I like to get right at it.

If there█s drift there I like to be right in the drift.

I like a bunch of junk around me.

It's sort of like it hides you and sounds is your enemy.

I mean a duck will hear you set your paddle in the bottom of the boat.

So a lot of times I just release the paddle when I'm skulling on my last stroke.

Just let it go and worry about the duck.

Okay.

I think a lot of duck hunters don't understand how well ducks hear.

Yeah, yeah.

They try to build some of these boats out of aluminum, I was told, and they wouldn't work because of the sound of the waves hitting the boat.

You're telling me this is kind of unique to Kentucky?

As far as I know, most of these boats were built in the Louisville area.

I also I've had a lot of references to boats in the Henderson, Owensboro area.

There was boats in that area and there was some of them all the way down to Cario.

now where they had builders down there or not, I don't know.

The builders I know about we're all from Louisville.

There's a simplicity to this that I'm a little bit shocked ever faded away.

I'm shocked that more people don't look at this and go, Wow, I don't need 15 decoys.

I don't need to build an area.

I'll just go get them wherever they're at.

You know, I think one of the reasons for that may be, and my sort of experience hunting ducks, my father and his cousin and there was roll over boat hunters around.

From about 1960, up through the mid seventies or so.

There wasn't hardly anybody hunting ducks in this piece of the river.

I hunted decoys and these old boats.

And I knew every duck hunter on the river.

I'd see somebody there, you know, you knew you were going to know them.

So I think there was a generation in there that just wasn't hunting ducks as much and lost interest in it.

And these things sort of faded into obscurity and the people who made them, you know to sell them, they died a long time ago.

The beautiful thing about this.

You sit in a blind duck hunting, you see the same terrain all day long.

In this situation, you're kind of exploring.

Well, and what's really funny.

None of the wildlife on the bank is afraid of you.

Yeah.

There's one particular bank we roll over.

And, not this past year, the year before we killed four coyotes off of that bank.

out of this boat with a shotgun in less than 15 yards.

If the wind is right, they don't even look at the water.

Squirrels don't look at the water.

Turkeys don't look at the water.

Nothing on the bank is afraid of you.

it█s really, really interesting.

After some really incredible.

Deer aren█t afraid of you.

I roll up on them and holler at them.

The only camo that you really need is you need to have something on your head.

And that's it, right?

That█s it.

I mean, because everything else is being hidden by the.

By the boat.

Really, you really don't want camo because it doesn't look right.

Everything that's in the river.

Notice the color of the river, how the water, how it matches the outside of the boat.

Yeah, my outfits are always sort of the same color.

A the angle that I was at, leaning completely on the left hand side gunnel.

The only way that a duck could have seen me, it had already been in flight.

Correct.

Well Randy, I have to say, this experience has been a lot different than what I was expecting.

And I can think of many hunting situations where using a rollover boat like this would would be a great way to sneak in on some game.

Oh, yeah.

I, it, it works really well and you can.

Squirrel hunting is big fun out of it.

I'll tell you what.

I just enjoy the scenery and I like watching wildlife too.

My next step is I think I'm going to try to get out here in the boat with at some point in time, maybe take some game.

That█d be good.

November is a month that we have many different types of hunters out in the field.

If you're out, make sure you know your rules and regulations and you're being courteous to other hunters.

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.

Did you know that Kentucky is home to the largest elk herd 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 Kristine.

Very nice.

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 are learned 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