this week on Kentucky Afield.

Rabbit season is now open statewide and we're hunting alongside a group of former college and NFL football players that just love to get out there.

Then we'll take a dive into a pretty interesting skill set and hobby, and that is reloading.

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.

November is the month of Hunters Orange.

But when deer season is over, you don't put that hunter's orange away.

It's also a great time to hit the field in search of rabbits.

Henry County has rabbits.

There are so many good spots in Henry County that I feel really comfortable, even though we've never been here before.

We're going to get some bunnies up Time to load them up.

Rabbit Number one is on the move.

You hear that one?

That's real high pitched squeal.

Scream that dog, when it barks, it's the rabbit's up.

It's Right in front of her.

we're out here in Henry County today doing one of my absolute favorite things, and that's rabbit hunting.

I've got a crew of people here that I've done some hunting with in the past.

A lot of football coaches and former football players but today is the day to get out.

They're going to talk a little football, talk about hunting and fishing and why they just love being outdoors.

Pat, Is that your first rabbit?

Fist right.

First one of the day to hey, hey.

Come here.

Hey, come here.

Come here, Come here, Come here, Look here Pat.

Look at we got here the dogs.

Dogs tried to claim that one first rabbit ever.

First one.

Can't beat that.

So we didn't.

We didn't see it.

So was it close to Is it in the woods?

It was running through and it was running down here in this creek kinda.

Okay.

And that's where I shot it.

First rabbit, hey you get three more today.

So, four is the limit you get you get plenty more shooting.

I must have some pretty good teachers.

First rabbit?

Yeah.

dropped my water down there.

All the thorns down there and I got a spray bottle now.

I started, I was a rookie free agent to Green Bay After I graduated in the spring of ‘04 I was there till the last cut and ended up getting released.

And ended up singing on the practice squad for New York Then I ended up making the roster.

I was there in ‘04 and █05 in New York.

Then I went to Saint Louis in ‘06.

And then Dallas in ‘07.

Ok.

So Pat was at Green Bay for a year.

Yeah.

We were actually talking about it for a little bit He was there a little bit before me.

But a couple of guys I played with when I was there He played with there as well.

Oh ok. Whitetail.

There it is, right there We both missed?

Here he goes, here he goes.

Here he goes.

Hey, we got rabbits run everywhere Well, the dogs brought one rabbit down through here.

And they sight chased another one right out.

And I shot him right over here.

We got rabbits going every which Lookey there, double trouble.

ok, ok, you got em, you got em.

Here it goes, right here, right here.

Coming at you Nick.

Coming at you Nick.

Here you go Nick.

Right here buddy.

Nice.

Nice work.

Nice job.

Yes, sir.

Way to go, yes sir.

Yeah.

That thing.

Thing.

It's the same rabbit.

I do think it's the same rabbit.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I do think there's another one or two up here.

And then.

He said that dale saw four or five over there.

Really?

So we've got all kinds of more rabbits in here.

Well let█s go get them.

Yes.

Right.

Right there.

Right there.

That█s number two.

Got one!

You got the rabbit?

Yeah.

Sweet.

Nice job.

Yeah I missed that first shot.

I got a better aim.

On that second one.

Took my time and Aimed through it.

Did you get him?

Yep.

Dead rabbit.

The doges made it quiet.

And uh, I was kind checking through this ridge.

They haven█t been coming into the open field today as much.

They been kinda Staying in these creeks and these ridges.

Um so, I just I saw him going over top of this ridge.

And he kinda stopped.

Pat, you got two bunnies today, too.

That's pretty good I hear.

Yeah, that is good.

You know what?

We kill a lot of rabbits today.

Had a lot of fun dogs.

They ran a lot and put a lot of miles on them.

I appreciate you guys coming out and doing this.

And hopfully we get out and get a chance to do it one more time.

I'm here today with Deer Program biologist Tommy Apostolopoulos.

How you doing?

I'm doing well.

You know, deer seasons in a lot of hunters are hitting the woods, and everyone's kind of searching for that trophy buck right?

Yes, best time of year.

It is the best time of year when you bring a deer home.

One of your very first things your hunting buddies are going to ask you is, Hey, what it score?

That's right.

Yeah.

So what what is score?

That's kind of a weird that's kind of a weird topic.

Tell me a little bit about what a score is.

Yeah.

So when you're talking about a score, typically it's the Boone and Crockett score.

So Boone and Crockett have been around for a long time.

It's the original conservation organization in North America, founded by Teddy Roosevelt and a couple other of his conservation buddies back in the 1800s.

And it originally was set up to incentivize harvesting these old, mature animals in order to preserve and conserve the females and the young animals to bolster the population.

Now, it has turned into it's kind of morphed into not only conservation, but also is this standardized way of measuring big game animals.

So in this case, deer, you can compare a deer that was harvested and scored tomorrow compared all the way back to, you know, the 1960s and seventies.

And it's taken no matter where it's taken anywhere in the whitetails█s range, that score is going to be comparable to any other score of a white tailed deer through this Boone and Crockett scoring system.

And there's two different kinds of scoring.

So there's there's typical Whitetail racks and there's not typical whitetail racks.

And the way that you score, it's a little bit different.

So if you have a big gnarly buck, then you would hope to score that.

Not typical, because then those aren't deductions, those are additions.

And so that's going to add to your score.

Kentucky prides itself on being a big buck state.

We thought that it would be important to have Boone and Crockett scores across the state that were easily accessible wherever you lived in the Commonwealth.

Over 30 of US agency staff went and were trained by Boone and Crockett staff, and we're certified as Boone and Crockett and Pope and young measures.

So Pope and Young is similar to Boone and Crockett, but it's with archery equipment.

If you take a deer that is a mature trophy deer and you want to get it scored, all you have to do is go to the Kentucky Department of Fish Wildlife website, click on deer, and you go down and you'll see a little medallion on there that says Boone and Crockett scoring.

It'll give you a map that shows you the address and the contact information for every Boone and Crockett score in the state of Kentucky.

That's exactly right.

And we're pretty evenly distributed across the state.

We can meet you.

We can have you come to us if we do measure your deer and it does score over 160 as a typical or over 185 as not typical, there is a small fee to enter it into the Boone and Crockett book.

If you enter in the book, then you are in that book indefinitely.

So your name basically goes down in history for for harvesting this deer.

This is a huge service to our deer hunters out there.

And to learn more information, go to FW.KY.GOV and then go click on Deer and look for the Boone and Crockett medallion?

We've got 30 new official scores right here in the state of Kentucky.

Modern firearm season for deer is winding down.

But if you're looking for the perfect hobby in the off season, maybe you should consider reloading.

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.

Here we have Tasha Boyd with a beautiful bug that she took in.

Knott County Kentucky.

She was 25 weeks pregnant when this deer was taken.

Congratulations.

Check out Hannah Chapman, and she caught her very first fish on a fly rod, a trout at Otter Creek Recreational area.

Drake Perry Court this nice Ohio River Muskie on a fly rod.

Nice job.

Check out this beautiful buck that was taken by Mark Swaner in Pulaski County.

This deer was taken with archery equipment.

Seven year old Eli Hensley took this nice eight point buck with a crossbow.

Congratulations.

Here we have a beautiful sawger that was taken on the Ohio River by Amy Tudor.

Nice job.

Richard Conrad got this nice blue catfish at Barren River Lake fishing with his son, Taylor.

Nice job.

Here in Kentucky, the modern farm season for deer is winding down.

But don't let yourself catch cabin fever.

The winter months are a great time to try small game hunting or try some winter 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