This week on Kentucky Afield, we're exploring a form of hunting that dates back nearly 10,000 years: Falconry.

Next, we█ll join fisheries biologists on Lake Barkley to find out about a new project that should be great for bass fishermen.

Then we're in kayaks, but we're not fishing.

We're on the hunt for fox squirrels.

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.

Hunting by means of a raptor is one of the oldest methods of take, and it's still being done right here in the state of Kentucky.

You brought two beagles, right?

I brought two.

Yeah.

So we got three females.

I brought checkers today.

We're not actually hunting with the shotgun today, are we?

No.

It's going to be a little different today.

You█ve brought a bird of prey that you've trained to rabbit hunt out in front of your bagels, right?

Yes, sir.

It's a harris hawk.

Well, let's get the bird out.

This bird, if you watch Kentucky Afield, you've seen this bird before.

It's on the opening scene where that bird comes down and hits the rabbit, and it's actually the same exact bird.

It's the same exact bird.

Okay.

And that was this bird here, Bullet.

Bullet.

Let's meet Bullet.

I believe we got one going.

You better get the bird, huh?

This bird here was a juvenile that first year.

Okay, so this makes her fifth season.

This bird knows what those dogs are doing and it's going to get up on a limb and follow those dogs around waiting to see the rabbit so they can attack, right?

Yep.

He's wanting to go right now.

You do what you need to do.

All right.

We'll see if she hears them bark again, and if she does she'll go to where they're at.

She'll get somewhere where she can see good.

This is some real good habitat for rabbit.

It looks great.

If they aren█t all frozen stiff.

Get in there, Checkers.

Hunt ‘em up.

Get in there, checkers.

there!

There he goes!

Go get it, checkers!

Here he goes.

Here he goes.

Right here.

He should be getting on it.

There she goes there again.

And she's getting higher and higher up in the trees to where she can get a better vantage point to see this rabbit.

And she pretty much hangs back.

She's been hunted enough to know that when that rabbit is jumped in a certain area, it'll generally come back to that same area.

And that's what she's doing right now.

And now she's going to the big trees and watch for the rabbit.

I need to get on up that way.

This rabbit just ran round this way down into that brush pile.

Then the dogs ran the rabbit out and now the bird is just following it right on down through here, knowing it's probably going to come right back here.

Yep.

I see the rabbit right there.

Look, it's out there in the open too.

Oh, rabbit cuts coming down hill, Rabbits coming down hill right here.

Yeah.

She should take another perch and then look for it.

She went down one time after it.

She█s cold, man.

Saw it, she wanted it, but she wasn't 100% committed.

She█ll get loosened up to it.

If it happened on the very first dive, that wouldn't be normal anyway.

Now, I don't know if I want to watch the dogs or the bird.

I need to be able to take one eye, one direction, one eye on the other, and watch the birds and the dog at the same time.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I feel like i█m going to miss something if I look away either direction.

Yeah, they already get on it, rejump it down there somewhere and get some more action.

There she goes.

Stay with those dogs.

She's powerful enough to take one of those dog down, but she sees it as a relationship to use those dogs to try to capture gain.

It's pretty wild.

Get in here.

Get in here.

Look for him.

Look for him.

Find him, girl.

Find him.

Come on, Checkers.

Here, here, here, here.

Come on.

Hunt in here, hunt in here, hunt in here.

Man, that all looks good, doesn't it?

Yeah.

Looks good.

I think they may have jumped this rabbit.

That's why my bird flew down here.

I think it's seen one.

That bird is just waiting for us to get here because it saw that Rabbit.

Yup.

That rabbit already took off.

It's down there.

Checkers is on it.

I need to go get around that barn though.

Just being bullheaded.

They'll do that sometimes, especially when they get in a barn where there aint no wind and she thinks there's a rabbit in here.

There it goes, there it goes, there it goes.

Ho, ho, ho, ho.

There it goes, there it goes.

Here comes the rabbit down the hill and the bird█s in the barn.

Look.

Well, our bird decided to take a break and took a perch in this barn.

It literally ran right at my feet.

But the bird█s in there taking a break, so we need to get the bird back out here.

Tell it It's 15 minute lunch break is over.

Time to get out here and get busy.

I know that people say if you're a houndsman, it just gets in your blood.

It█s something you love, and obviously you got a deep passion for that.

Is it very similar for the birds?

I mean, is it something that just gets in your blood?

Oh, gosh, yeah.

Same thing.

I mean, you know, you're you're getting the best of both worlds here.

Like you said.

You're getting to listen to the rabbits run, like a lot of people just go out and they like to run their dogs.

Yeah.

But this one here, you█re getting to watch the bird at work and try to catch that rabbit.

I mean, you get to watch the rabbit.

How it operates.

I mean, every day in the field when you're out there, you learn something and you listen, you learn your dogs, you know, when they're hot, when they're not, when they're off track, watching dogs, which ones leading, how they honor one another.

You learn something about your dogs, you learn something about your bird, and you learn something about rabbit hunting.

Absolutely.

You just can't beat that.

No, you can't.

I do a lot of genealogy and stuff.

I've got Native American blood that I've found and knew that from my Memaw in Hazard, Kentucky, and in doing that, I got all the way back to my 11th generation and my 11th great grandfather, him and his brother Simon, and their last name was Latham.

They wrote a book on falconry.

Its “Falconers Lure and Cure,” I believe, is the way it is.

It talks about husbandry and taking care of the birds and stuff like that.

Anyway, I got to do this research and find out that that my 11th great grandfather was Sergeant of Falconer for King James the First of Scotland.

Really?

in the 1600█s.

It's crazy.

That is crazy.

Talk about getting in your blood.

Yeah.

I mean, I had no idea.

But, you know, and one of my daughters got me the book for Christmas this year.

That█s awesome.

Yeah.

You thinking about moving these dogs and making our way up that way?

We can hunt clear to the creek that way.

Hey, we've been running one rabbit the entire time, and I can still see the truck.

That barn wasn't there so we█re close.

Come on, Lucy!

Turn them loose here?

Yeah man, this is it.

They should get right in there and know what to do and have one up in a little bit.

If I turned her loose here and where she█d be down low in a growed up pond and with bulltoads in it and stuff.

She█ll follow the dogs around in there and she'll have this short purchase.

But what I would rather them to do while i█m holding her on this side is if they can take the rabbit out of here and bring it down through here.

I've got a lot better shot with her in the trees up here of getting one.

There she goes, Hey, check this out.

I can definitely see why Steve brought us to this particular location.

It's a big pond that█s dried up and they filled it in with a bunch of debris and the rabbits are piled in there, and I'm up on the edge of it right now.

And look, every one of these little thorn trees here are chewed off.

What this is, is end of January, not a whole lot of food on the landscape.

And these rabbits have come up here and they will to this off and eat this.

And there are probably 30 or 40 of these little trees down here.

And every one of them have chewed it off, all at about four or five inches high.

There's definitely a lot of rabbits here.

This is one true, sure sign when you see this you got rabbits and probably a pretty good population of them.

I'm going to check this right here real quick.

They jumped one in here the other day.

He█s in that thicket.

Getting ready to see that rabbit squirm out of there.

There he goes, there he goes.

Ho!

How could you have not seen that bird?

I saw one go over the hill right there.

My dogs just took that one in the barn.

Right here.

Right here.

Come on, Lucy!

Here he is!

Ho, Ho, Ho!

well there█s the bird, she's going after it.

She might have got it.

She might have got it.

She may have that rabbit.

Golly man, she missed it.

Right at the edge.

That was pretty cool.

We jumped the rabbit out of here and we went to chase the dogs.

And the bird stayed here.

Yep.

Right where it was jumped.

Right where it was jumped.

I didn't think that the bird was even making an attempt because bird was on the other side of this pond bed here.

Right.

Lo█ and behold, she came down and tried to smash it.

Yeah.

She's made a good effort with it, there.

Well, Steve, I always enjoy watching a bird work like it did today.

That was a great day in the field.

And we got no rabbits.

Right.

Yeah, we don't always get them, but it's like I told you before, it's a lot slimmer chance and getting them going out there with the shotgun and.

Oh yeah, that's one of the reasons why I like it so much because when you do get one, it's a thrill.

It's like, it's like getting that big buck, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, each and every one.

And I mean, this bird here actually has taken a four rabbit limit before, which is what you're allowed with a gun in state of Kentucky.

It's almost like when she dives down, it's almost like taking the shot with with a gun.

You don't always happen.

I mean, how many times you miss?

You know, sometimes she is diving down and trying to grab something with her feet moving.

Sometimes you miss.

And but, you know, watching the whole process of her watch the dogs, you just can't beat that.

Oh, yeah.

I love running my dogs.

We got a lot of work with the dogs, and our three dogs worked together real, real well.

They did.

Well, You taught me a lot about falconry, and I look forward to doing it again someday.

Thank you so much.

Yes, sir.

Anytime.

I really appreciate it.

I do, too.

If you're a bass fisherman and you see a lay down, you're going to give that structure some more attention.

That's why our fisheries biologists are placing more opportunities at Lake Barkley.

So we're here on the shores of Lake Barkley today, and we're engaged in a fish habitat project.

Specifically, we're trying to improve the shoreline, fish spawning habitat.

This project is actually a big partnership between multiple agencies.

So our agency, TWRA down in Tennessee, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Forest Service, as well as a lot of local angler groups.

It's all part of a big grant which was awarded from a federal fund called the National Reservoir Fisheries Habitat Partnership.

So they provide funding for basically improving fisheries habitat in reservoirs across the country.

And in this case, Lake Barkley was chosen as a top project.

So they were able to fund all of the material purchases for this project.

So what we're doing today is we're adding what we're calling lay downs.

So we're taking trees, cutting them from the land between the Lakes National Forest Service area.

And then we're placing those along the shoreline at a lower water elevation so they'll be available to fish earlier in the springtime, as TVA and the Corps of Engineers bring the lake up to summer pool.

The main goal for this project is to improve the bass spawns at Lake Barkley.

That's where we've been struggling the most in recent years.

So that's where the habitat is really kind of designed for.

But it'll also be used by any species within that same family, the centrarchid family, that includes a lot of our sport fish, bluegill, red ear, crappie, all of them are going to be using this habitat for spawning.

So far this morning we've done about 15 lay downs on the opposite bank over here.

Now we switched banks, ready to work their way down every 30 to 40 feet, placing one of these lay downs.

Now this tree is a hickory.

So I chose it because the hardwood is going to last a lot longer, doesn't have very many branches on it.

Bass like simple cover.

They don't like too many branches, we get a lot of questions about whether an individual angler█s allowed to place habitat or fish structure into Kentucky Lake or Lake Barkley.

In our case, we're allowed to do this work because we have special permits from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as well as the U.S. Forest Service, which allow us to cut these trees and to place them in the water at specific locations.

One of the things that we're doing to evaluate the success of this kind of habitat is we're doing weekly snorkel surveys on a subsection of these sites during spring time.

We've done that over the past two years to see whether fish are actually using this habitat to spawn.

And encouragingly, about 50% of these sites at our testing zone have been used by Bass to spawn in a particular year.

Nearly 100% of these sites will be used by Sunfish to spawn.

So it's tough to say whether we'll see an actual improvement in the catch rates of anglers over time.

But it is a new project that we are trying to improve those catch rates with.

If you have a kayak or a canoe and you like to squirrel hunt, maybe you should combine the two and hit the water.

You guys ready?

Let█s hit it.

All right.

We always tell people that from a kayak, you've got more access to more water throughout the state.

But today, with the way the lakes up, this is about your only access.

This is about it.

Yeah, this is about it.

I mean, we are not even to the parking lot yet.

I'm already tired.

We're over the parking lot.

So, Nathan, obviously we're hunting today.

How much experience do you have hunting from a kayak?

Quite a bit.

A lot of time hunting from a canoe.

Do a little bit from a kayak as well.

But yeah, quite a bit.

You can be really stealthy, really quiet.

You can get right on top of game.

When the water is up like this, It really is interesting too, because we can get ourselves literally up into the woods.

Yeah, but today I presume that since we're squirrel hunting this time of year, there's nearly nothing in the trees for them to eat on and you're starting to get some of the very first buds to come out.

You█ll have squirrels feeding on those, but squirrels are going to be right on the ground digging up nuts that they buried all year.

And a lot of times it's right on the water.

Yeah, we very well may have squirrels that are within perfect shots with a shotgun to take take a squirrel.

So I'm hoping that's what happens.

I'm going to I'm going to guess that's probably what's going to happen.

So I think that the way the the line drawn really the boundaries right in here.

So this this point on, we can kind of start getting a little more quiet and start looking for squirrels.

So Boon, keep your eyes out.

Any time now you pull that shotgun up and let us know what you see.

I think that's an immature eagle.

I think it's an immature bald eagle.

All right.

So so far, one hawk, one eagle.

That's got to mean something good for the squirrels around here.

They're not hunting here for no reason.

Right here.

Laying on this limb is a big, big fox squirrel on that limb.

Look out on the end of that limb.

All right.

See this big tree right here in front of you?

See him?

Laying there.

You see it?

Nice shot.

Well, hey, we talked about it.

Its your first squirrel out of a kayak.

Nice job, and today's not great conditions.

We had to come out here and get one in.

This wind is pretty good.

We'll paddle up and see what you got.

Good shot, Boone.

It's a big squirrel.

Tell you what, Boone.

A limit of those may sink your kayak.

That might be the biggest squirrel I've ever seen.

That's a monster.

That█s a nice shot, man.

I tell you what, that squirrel never moved.

Not one time.

And just sit there and he thought he was hid.

And you know what?

He almost was.

Hold that thing up again, let me see him.

He looks huge.

A big ol█ bull squirrel.

That's a monster.

Let█s see what you got.

Good gravy.

It█s like a young cat right there, isn█t it?

Good night.

Good shootin█.

We'll, we got one squirrel.

We got plenty of bank left.

Maybe we can get us another one.

This really does open up so many opportunities for WMAs here in the state of Kentucky because you think a lot of the WMAs are around lakes?

Yeah, Lots of places you can go and hunt, that's for sure.

And talk about a good way to go get Turkey.

Oh, yeah.

Hear one gobble and go to them through the water and then take off and pursue them.

This would be a great way to go.

This would be a great way to get into that.

Yeah.

Here's one right here.

It's on the ground now.

It came down a tree.

Big fox squirrel.

I see him, I see him, I see him.

I see him, he█s coming down.

He█s right in front of Nathan.

Did you get him Nathan?

What's that?

You got it, didn█t you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good.

Is that the same one?

Yeah.

Okay.

I was sitting down up there and I looked up the hill about 50 yards, and I see this big fox squirrel come right down the tree and hit the ground.

Well, then I couldn't see it, but I knew it was right on top of us.

He was coming right across that cedar.

Yep.

Yeah.

If I would█ve let him get much further, he█d have gone right over the lake.

Well, nice shot.

There you go.

Boy, they grow ‘em big down here.

First time I've been on a squirrel hunting trip where two squirrels made a dinner.

Yeah.

Yes, that's a family feeder right there.

How do you like to fix squirrel?

I█ve pressure cooked them before.

Yeah.

You know?

And that's good to get all the meat off the bone, but easy.

We just quarter them out and take out that little bit of back strap, put them in the pan and fry them up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And two, that's a meal right there.

Yeah.

There's no doubt about it.

There's a squirrel.

Get ready, over on the right hand side.

It's right on the water.

You want to shoot it, Boone?

On up there, Bud, get up and see if you see him before you pick your gun up.

Let chad get up there by you, Boone.

Yep.

I see him.

He's moving.

He's on the side of that tree, looking out.

Nice.

Nice job.

Good shot, Boone.

So we were kind of easing that through here and sure enough, right here on this point, right at the water was a pretty good sized fox squirrel.

And as it went to take off up the hill, it stopped and got on a tree and turned around and was kind of looking down at us.

Well this has been the most fun squirrel hunt I've ever had.

Never even loaded my gun.

This has been, I tell you what.

It was a fantastic afternoon.

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 nice buck that was taken by Landen.

This is his first buck ever.

Congratulations.

Here we have six year old Trigger Williams on his first ever waterfowl hunt, where he was able to take a goose.

Nice job.

Here we have Elizabeth Gibson with her very first gobbler taken in Henderson County, Kentucky.

Nice job.

Here we have Brian Alltimer and his pup, Doc Holliday, who had a good day of quail hunting on Peabody WMA.

Here we have Ryder Blacklock with his first deer he was hunting in Ohio County on his family farm.

Says he watches Kentucky Afield every week.

Thank you and congratulations.

Here we have Carl Wells who was doing a little Christmas Day Bobcat hunting in Nicholas County.

Congratulations.

Hey, turkey season will be here before you know it.

Now is a great time to get those calls out and start patterning your shotgun.

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.