This week on Kentucky Afield.

While many of the state's hunters are taking to the woods for modern firearm season, we're going to show you how our early muzzle loader hunt unfolded.

Next, Deer hunting is what's on most people's minds, but it's not the only opportunity that's out there.

This is a great time to catch smallmouth bass as well.

Then we are making one of everybody's favorites, and that's venison jerky.

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.

Are you wanting to get into deer hunting and you'd like to maximize your time in the woods using only one gun?

Well, the muzzleloader may be the perfect choice for you.

Well i█m out here for the afternoon hunt for the opening day of the early muzzleloader season.

We've been seeing a lot of deer.

Was able to move a stand and get set up down in a corner of this field where the deer have been using it a ton.

There's bedding areas on both sides.

Got in here this morning, got set up and ended up seeing quite a few deer, had many deer in range, but I didn't see that buck that I've been waiting for.

I did see a pretty good buck right in that area where I placed this stand.

But I was bow hunting and I was three or 400 yards away.

Now I'm right in the zone.

Today I hunted until 11:00 this morning and I had does in range literally when I got down out of the stand.

I didn't want to shoot a doe in this bedding area because the area where they're going in there, I don't want to go in there to get a doe out.

Now, if I get in there this afternoon and a doe comes out early and gives me a chance to get a shot out in the field, I'll probably take that shot and then go back and buck hunt until dark.

I know the bucks are in there, but a shot early in the hunt I don't think will mess with that too much.

You know, I did have a coyote come through this morning.

I thought about trying to get a shot at that coyote but I really didn't want the smell of that coyote right there laying by my stand the whole time.

So pretty cool seeing.

I've been seeing tons of wildlife out of this location.

It's a pretty easy walk in, but I got to go through a little bedding area to get there.

I got to slip through real quiet, get up in this field edge and literally with a muzzle loader.

I am about 180 yards to the property boundary.

It's a pretty big open area for a muzzleloader hunt.

It's absolutely perfect.

I haven't muzzleloader hunted last few seasons, I haven't been taking advantage of it.

And I'm excited to be out here today.

Well we're up here ready to start this hunt.

I tell you what, I'm about as confident in today's hunt as I have ever been.

Just because of how many times I've hunted the other end of this field, four hundred yards away.

I've never hunted down there without seeing deer right here.

So hopefully get one out here early, get a shot, take it doe and buck hunt the rest of the way out.

That would be ideal.

Oh deer right over here to the left, 40 yards.

Look like there█s four.

Here they come.

This doe in the front she looks to be probably the biggest one.

Okay here she comes she█s going to move to our left.

I was surprised to see that deer run off, but a big smoke cloud came up.

I really don't know what happened.

Hopefully we've got dinner on the ground, so now we can just hunt for some antlers.

I'll tell you what, this buck hunt is about over.

We got a few minutes of daylight left, and I got to unload this gun.

I can't hunt tomorrow.

If I get a chance to take this big doe here I'll probably take it.

If I█m going to process one, might as well process two.

Well, I tell you what, usually we eat about four or five deer a year.

This puts me in a good situation where I know from here on out I'm buck hunting and buck hunting only.

Hopefully get to use that buck tag, but this was a great opportunity to do that today.

Just didn█t show up.

I ran out of light.

Well found my two does.

They actually ran on the same trail within 20 yards of each other, so I pulled them together here.

My trophy buck never showed up.

We did see a couple of small bucks, nothing that I was that interested in.

And I was sitting there thinking, You know what?

I can't hunt tomorrow.

Muzzleloader season is only two days.

I thought, you know what this is a great opportunity for me to unload my muzzleloader, go ahead and fill the freezer, top it off.

And now I can focus the rest of the season on some antlers.

Here today with Captain McQueary.

How are you doing?

Great, Chad, how are you?

I'm doing great.

Hey, there are so many great activities here in the state of Kentucky that you could do on the water year round, but man that water gets cold.

There's some things you really need to think about.

You're exactly right, Chad.

You want to make sure you do that pre-launch check, make sure your boat's properly maintained, make sure you have the proper amount of fuel, and always make sure you let somebody know where you're launching and where your location is that you're going to be planning on going.

I tell you what if you fall in the water and it█s cold water conditions, man you've got to make some decisions really quick to try to get yourself out of that water and back to normal temperature.

You sure do.

The first thing you're going to encounter is cold water shock.

You have to be prepared for that because most likely you're going to gasp.

That's your reflex.

And if you're under water, you could take in water.

The next thing you need to start thinking about is a time limit that you have to get out of the water.

Typically, we tell people 30 minutes at a maximum.

The second thing you need to think about is hypothermia.

Again, you're in that 30 minute mark, depending on how you're dressed.

And lastly, you need to take precautions once you get out of the water.

Those post rescue issues that you may encounter coming from cold water and getting back out and getting your body back to its normal body temperature.

Summertime, wintertime, it doesn't matter.

The most important thing is have a PFD, right?

Have your PFD, make sure you wear your killswitch on you and make sure you have a PFD.

Have it on.

You can't be too prepared because accidents do happen.

And you might enter the water unexpectedly.

Make sure your PFD fits properly, and it is too properly maintained.

And I tell you what, if you're in a bass boat or a fishing boat that█s more than a couple of years old, there's a good chance it may not have a ladder on it.

You're exactly right.

You do want to have that plan.

You have to be careful that you don't look at the bank and immediately swim to the bank.

If you have a boat closer that you can get into, but you must have a ladder because it can be difficult to get into.

I love cold water fishing and there's a lot of fun activities you can do on the lake and it's just a great place to be for leisure activities, but you have to take precaution.

You're exactly right.

Safety is number one.

Well, thank you.

And we hope everyone has a very safe winter boating season.

Thank you Chad.

There█s what we come looking for right there.

If you take the proper safety precautions, wintertime fishing could be your most productive time on the water.

Oh, what a beautiful day.

Now, this is a fantastic lake to catch you know, good, good size, small mouth and trophy, small mouth, obviously a world record is from here.

But this lake gets a lot of pressure now.

Yeah.

To come here and try to catch an eight or nine, ten pounder.

I mean, that's a fish of a lifetime.

I fish this lake a lot.

And I've never.

I've never broken 8 pounds and I have a seven pounder.

But the lake is is fishing really, really, really good right now.

Yes.

So hopefully I'm going to try to fill some swim baits, some jigs, maybe some blade baits.

But I'm going to start throwing a swim bait and see if we can't catch a fish what do you think?

We can do it.

Let's go.

All right.

I will tell you, this time of year, the water temperature is 46 degrees.

It's all about a real slow presentation.

And a lot of times we catch fish down here this time of year the bites are not aggressive.

It doesn't feel like you're catching a 4 pound fish when you first get a bite.

Really?

It feels like you're getting a bluegill just pecking it and you're like, man, these little fish are driving me nuts.

Well, they're not little fish.

Yeah, they're big fish.

There we go.

There you go.

Now you want to establish a food source, check this out.

How about that?

Now you think they're actively feeding?

Their mouth is plum full of shad.

How about that?

We've got about an 18 inch fish there.

We've been here 5 minutes.

We now know they're feeding on shad activity and we're sitting in between 35 and 40 feet of water and we're catching fish in 15 to 18 feet.

So hey now we're on to some.

We just run around and do this all day.

You need a net?

I don't think it█s that big.

Sometimes they get bigger when I get to the boat though.

Not a bad fish.

He█s a lot fatter than the last one.

That's a healthy fish there.

Yeah.

That's a thicker fish than the last one, probably about the same length.

You know we're looking at that 18 to 19 inch fish, 18 and a little bit.

You would expect a fish that size when you hit your bait to about pull the pole out of your hand.

Yeah.

That was it.

June they will 2:30 in the morning.

Yeah, absolutely will.

Go get a little bigger.

So when you first started fishing down here, how often did you guys throw soft plastics?

We were throwing mostly a spinner bait.

I fished with Ernie Taylor.

He guided down here quite a bit.

And when we first started fishing down here, we would find the grass and get out right at the very end of it at 25, 28 foot deep.

And then we went to different times, jig or the plastic.

We got a rod bender.

He is way out here.

Oh, I didn't get that little brownie.

I believe I found one of the more largemouth.

Oh, sure did.

How did you do that?

Very carefully.

Typically, for me, it's about one large mouth for every 20 small mouth.

Well, you wouldn't leave me no small mouth, so I just have to catch a largemouth next.

Hey, we need your brown cousin.

That's pretty, pretty healthy fish, though.

Turn it loose.

I'm going to get this ten pounder out here.

All right.

Well.

Oh, there you go.

You may want to grab the net on this one Darrell, if you don't mind?

Now can you believe that?

So I cast it up in here, and there's a lot of rock that's pretty easy to get hung on, hooked on that rock was shaking that off and got on the backside.

When I snapped it free, I thought Darrell hooked my line because I felt it make that motion went ahead and set the hook and that's what hit it.

20 and a little more than half, almost, almost 21 inches.

That's a really good fish right there.

Put that one back in the water.

Yeah.

What I'm throwing here is just this little, it█s a 3/8 ounce tungsten lure.

Throwing this little swim bait here.

I'm throwing its exposed.

Run this bait on there.

And these, the swing impact fats have a little area where you bring your hook up through.

What this thing does.

It goes down and it sets.

And when I start to pull it, it comes up like this.

And very little motion will get that tail making this move.

And then I'll pull across the bottom.

I'll stand it back up to reason it doesn't feel like a big strike is because those fish, it's catching their attention.

They're just picking it up.

When they pick it up, you'll feel something very, very slight.

If you're not using a really sensitive rod and fluorocarbon line, you may not feel it at all.

You just all said notice there's no bait and that happens.

And you've had a strike.

Oh, oh.

Need a net?

No, I don't know.

I don█t know what I need.

Oh, oh yeah.

It's the right color.

10lb test line you might.

He█s the right color.

There you go.

Yeah, he's out here deep.

He's out here.

I pull in real slow.

Boy look how light colored he is.

Now, I'll tell you, we've ran all over the lake today and we pulled back in.

We can literally see the boat ramp, fishing some grass, and here they here they sit there right here beside us.

That's a nice fish, though.

And you see that this time of year you start to see when they come up, you'll see some that are really colored up and then you'll get a really pale colored fish like this.

And these are fish that have been in deep, deep waters.

Cold water just coming up.

And they're just coming up.

Thank you there little fish.

He was ready to get going.

Oh, missed him.

Just got pulverized.

Oh, came back and hit it.

Get ready.

Look at that.

That's when they're starting to get more aggressive right there.

And you swing on one and miss and he comes running back and hits it again.

That's when you know, they're starting to get aggressive.

Darrell this might be a pretty good fish.

Whoa, grab that net there, if you don't mind.

I just happened to have it this time.

This old boy ain't going nowhere.

Thank you.

That is a nice one there.

This one here.

That's the best one of the day.

This one here, it's got some girth to it.

Not that terribly long, but look how thick and healthy this small mouth here is.

20 and a quarter, 4lb eight ounces.

All right.

That's a beauty that right there is a reason to come to Dale Hollow.

Catch you a big fish like that.

Thank you, buddy.

Away he goes.

If you have some luck this deer season and you're looking for a new way to prepare it, why not give jerky a try?

Because who doesn't love jerky?

So today I'm back in my hometown of Mount Washington, and I'm here with Sandy Lentz.

And Sandy, about 30 years ago, you made some deer jerky for me.

That changed my way of thinking about deer jerky.

A lot of it was very unique in a lot of ways, and today we're going to make that deer jerky, and I bet it'll be just as good as it was 30 years ago.

Well I hope.

Tell me a little bit about your the jerky that you make.

And there's one thing that's really unique about it, and that is how you actually dry it.

Well, I dry it in my oven.

Dry it in the oven.

In the oven.

I don't have a dehydrator and I think it's quicker to me.

You also have a recipe that you make your marinade out of that is really smoky and it's salty and it's just it's got to really it's got a lot of flavor.

It's really, really good.

And I want you to show me how that I can how I can make that in my house.

Okay.

It's not hard.

It's not hard at all.

Takes about 15 ingredients, mix them all up and put your meat in there.

Marinated for 24 hours.

What type of cuts do you like to use?

I use shoulders, roasts, tenderloin, steak, even.

Okay, you know, anything you can cut and strips like 3 to 4 inches long and about an inch wide.

You've already done some steps here.

You've taken some shoulder and some back strap and and you've cut this deer up and into strips.

Right?

So once you get this all cut up, what do you got here?

A couple of pounds, probably, yes.

And that's what the recipe calls for is 2 pounds.

2 pounds okay.

So once you get your meat all cut and and it's in quarter inch strips, what's the next process?

Okay.

The next is mix up my batch of marinade.

Let█s do that.

Okay.

And this is a recipe that you remember.

I've seen this recipe before.

So we're going to use a teaspoon and a half of the salt.

All right.

Teaspoon and a half of salt.

And I usually do the dry ingredients first.

Onion salt is one teaspoon.

Now we need garlic salt.

And that calls a teaspoon.

A quarter of a teaspoon of black pepper got to have all the peppers in there.

It calls for a lot of pepper, let's see, a quarter of red pepper.

Now we need one teaspoon of white pepper.

There you go.

Okay.

A half a teaspoon of meat tenderizer, One teaspoon celery salt.

So now we're going to move to the wet ingredients, which is starts with lemon juice, one teaspoon of lemon juice.

One teaspoon of there it is, kitchen bouquet.

Whatever that is.

that you didn't know what it was.

That I think that gives it that dark color.

Now, a third of a cup of water.

All right.

A third of a cup of barbecue sauce.

All right.

That's right.

And I got to go with the spoon.

Yeah.

That's not going to want to come out of there real quick.

Now a third of a cup of Worcestershire sauce.

It seems like a lot doesn█t it?

And you know what, though?

We're going to soak a lot of meat in here.

2lb already sliced up, takes quite a bit.

We need a third of a cup of soy sauce.

And I think there's one left.

And now we just need the liquid smoke.

Hey, it already smells like jerky.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

As soon as you crack the lid of this it says, man this is jerky.

All right, now, once you get that done, you're going to mix this all up really good.

Make sure it's mixed up good.

So you just start laying that in and mixing it in there.

Get my bigger ones first, if I can, you know, because it cooks more evenly if you've got them all the same size.

So I know you really like jerky and your family really likes to eat jerky.

You've been making this for a long, long time, but something you haven't been doing for a long, long time is hunting.

But this is your deer, isn't it?

This is my deer.

That's exactly right.

The first year your first deer.

You started deer hunting last year, right?

I did.

All right.

I think that's about 2lb and that's really all you need.

I just make more when you make more later on.

Okay.

So once you get this all mixed up in there and it's completely coated, now what do you do?

Well, gonna put a lid on it and it's going to go in refrigerator for 24 hours.

Okay.

And every now and then I go in there and shake it or stir it up.

Okay?

And that's all it is till, you know, you wait 24 hours and then you start hanging it and dry it.

Well, let's get it refrigerated.

All right.

All right.

So you already have some that has been marinating for 24 hours, right?

I do.

All right.

Let's take this over here and we'll look at the next step here.

So the next thing you do is you're going to squeeze some of this excess juice out of it because you don't want to dripping in your oven too much.

I mean, it's going to drip some, but I just want to be very long, so you just squeeze them out.

All right?

You're just squeezing the excess marinade off?

uh huh, and lay that out in strips.

Now all our meat has been squeezed off.

We've got the excess marinade off we█re ready to go to the oven.

Right.

And you got a little something you do to prep the oven for this as well, right?

I do.

I usually put wax paper down because it's going to drip as you're hanging.

Okay, well, I'll get the meat and we'll start getting the oven ready.

I put little strips right here where I know I'm all have it.

All right.

Next step Chad is that this right toothpick down about an inch or so because I don't want it to slide up.

I do my longest strips at the back.

Okay.

And you don't want your meat touching the racks.

So you don't want any meat touching each other and none touching the rack, so you just you're literally just using a toothpick to suspend this meat.

Exactly.

On the rack.

Okay.

Now, shorter ones are usually doing the front because they're going to get done first.

That's all there is to it.

So now once you get that in there and hung and ready to go, I'm going to prop it open.

You just tuck that little spoon in there to keep it from closing.

So you've got some airflow here?

Right.

Okay.

And we're going to turn it on in the lowest setting.

You can turn it on.

Mine only goes to 175.

All right.

All right.

If you have an oven, that'll go to 165 or one.

If you can go lower.

Yes.

Okay.

But now I've been doing it on 175 and in 4 to 5 hours, it's pretty good.

Well, Sandy, it's been right at 5 hours now.

What do you think?

I think we could check it and see what we got.

Looks like it's getting done.

Here, I'll get this pan out of here.

All righty.

I'm going to start pulling them out, then, Chad.

All right.

Man they smell, they smell fantastic.

Done with that now.

So, as you can tell, it's a little bit brittal, but it's done all the way through.

All right.

And then I think I have to do is just remove those toothpicks.

Well get you bowl over here.

We'll start taking toothpicks out.

All righty.

We█ll get her finished.

There we go.

All right.

First batch is done there.

Now.

Think it's ready to try?

Go ahead.

I█ll have a little piece here.

Want to try a piece?

All righty.

It looks great.

Exactly how I remember.

I can't wait.

I can't wait to put some in a bag on my next fishing trip.

I highly recommend giving this a try.

You don't need to have a dehydrator.

You can do it right there in the oven and it makes great jerky.

Thank you.

I█m glad you enjoyed it.

Oh, you're welcome.

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 Ryan Asher with his very first squirrel that was taken on his family farm in Grant City, Kentucky.

Ryan used a 22 rifle.

Congratulations.

Here we have ten year old Jaycee Bunch with their very first deer that was taken on the first day of youth season in Laurel County.

Here we have a nice red ear that was caught by Charlie Gibbs of E-town Kentucky.

This fish was caught at Kentucky lake.

Nice fish.

Here we have a nice catfish that was caught on Nolan Lake by Samantha and Sadie Bergen.

They were fishing with their grandfather, Kevin Large.

Check out this impressive ten point buck that was taken by 14 year old Baxter Fauntleroy.

Nice job.

Modern firearm deer season is now in.

If you're hitting the woods, make sure you wear your hunters orange and if you're in a tree, make sure you wear your safety harness.

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.