What I REALLY did this turkey season

I think that it's only fair of me to mention to you die-hards that this was planned before I decided to try Turkey hunting. A week into Turkey season, with only 3 days under my belt, I paused for a wedding and honeymoon. I know what you'll say. "Ward don't you own a calendar. Couldn't you have picked a month where nothing interfered. While I admit that we had originally tried to do that, in the end I had to pick an earlier day. It's all good though. Let's face it. This is the woman who swoons to a turkey call. May 8 dawned and off to the church we went. I was dressed in my penguin suit and had enough sense to leave the turkey call at home. I can only imagine what sort of trouble I could have got myself into with that device in my pocket….


Minister: Do you Ward take Alissa to me your bride?


Me: Cluck cluck purr


Alissa: I think I'm going to be mounting your head on the wall.


Two days later we were on the beach in Bahamas.

And in true tropical honeymoon fashion it wasn't long until we were relaxing with a cool beverage. Seems to be a common theme.

This blog isn't a food and drink blog so enough of that. This trip gave me a great opportunity to re-acquaint myself with another of my favourite outdoor pursuits. I was first certified as a SCUBA diver in 1986 and never fail make sure I get some dive time in whenever the opportunity presents itself. My honeymoon was the perfect opportunity.

 


Fortunately for me Sandals provided a professional photographer on almost every dive so there were some great pictures to choose from. It's hard to incorporate all the good things you see underwater but I did manage to get some great shots of some of the better moment. The wind was blowing fairly firmly all week and the first day was one of the worst. We couldn't go out into open water so the dive guides picked a shallow area that was between 10 and 20 feet deep. It probably would have been very disappointing except for one redeeming moment. This fellow showed up.

Turtles seem to be quite curious and will linger as long as you don't mess with them too much. HE watched us and we watched him. It was great.


The reefs in Bahamas has an invasive species. They tell me it's Lionfish. They seem to do very well because every time we got into the water we found a lot of them.

We found them tucked into little caves. We found them on the top of the reef. We found them in the shallows. We found them in the deeper waters. They were everywhere and magnificent.

The one day we saw sharks there was no cameraman. We jumped in the water and about 70 feet below us we could see a 6 foot grey shape cruising around. By the time I got to his depth he had moved off out of sight. We investigated a large wreck there and found a couple of large stingrays and had 3 smaller sharks show up and check us out. It was quite exciting. We saw some eels and barracuda and a big grouper peeking out from some coral.

One of the smallest but coolest things I found was a little snail hanging on a piece of corral. He wasn't very big. Only an inch or two long.

So that sums up a good chunk of my turkey season. A very good trade I think.