So this was our equipment for Tuesday and Wednesday:

A Hiller.

No where near as comfortable as the Jet Ranger. Technically, it's a three-seater, but you'd have a heck of a time squeezing someone into the middle seat. And they'd have next to no foot room, with this console practically in their lap:

I suppose you could strap someone down on the racks, M.A.S.H.-style, but it would tend to be a little cold.

Wouldn't have to worry about sick-sacks, though.

Provided you were facing down.

The pilot sits on the left, in his comfortable old surplus grey flight suit. The observer rides on the right, in our bright orange Nomex suit. The helmets are actually fairly comfortable, except for the chin strap, which tends to initiate the gag reflex even without any stomach dropping movements.

There are two large irregular patched holes in the lower bubble in front of the observer. Pilot said one was from the old GPS (the modern one, about the size of a cell phone, is velcroed on the console), and he wasn't sure about the other. But they certainly distort the front lower view:

Have to be deeply grateful to my warden, who volunteered for the Tuesday evening flight. He asked the pilot what the little handle in front of the door was for.

Emergency release of the door. It pops the hinges in case the latch is torqued shut.

He suggested not pulling the little handle in flight. The door would fly up into the rotor, or the tail.

And that would be bad.

Okay, important safety tip.

Not that I plan on pulling or touching anything other than the tape recorder or microphone when we're airborne. Or any other time, for that matter.

Once you're airborne, you cruise likely places and look for deer.

And, finding them, drop down on their asses until you have counted who's what, and then you move on to the next group.

One of the most frustrating parts of this task is figuring out where to put the fuel truck.

The pilot and fuel driver travel as a team, and you have to pay for every mile put on the fuel truck, just as you pay for every minute the chopper is airborne. So, knowing you have about two and a half hours of fuel on board, you need to guesstimate where that will put you, and direct the fuel driver to that spot ahead of time (you never want to waste good flying weather with the bird sitting on the ground waiting for gas).

And every year it is different. High winds, and you burn fuel faster, cover less ground. Find more deer and you spend more time circling and hovering, and will not end up where you thought. You have to balance how far you're willing to fly out of deer country to meet the truck, and how far he should drive in.

Only really screwed up once. Gave the fuel truck a fifty-mile drive, half on dirt roads, to our expected refueling point. And we found few deer, and had enough fuel left to make the fifteen-minute flight back to the highway. But instead had to sit for almost an hour waiting for the truck to arrive.

Tuesday and Wednesday went fine, though. Even though the driver missed our refueling spot by three miles on Tuesday. They found him anyway. Kinda hard to lose a truck out in that country.

He basically went one windmill too far:

All in all, it wasn't the best survey. Weather was good for most flights, but there was almost no snow, which makes the deer hard to spot, and leaves them scattered all over the country. And not in the usual warm places, either. Haven't listened to the tape, but I bet we found half what we normally do.

On Tuesday, the warden found three deer (yes, three deer) in the last half hour of flight. And landed right at dusk.

The high point of my flight on Wednesday?

We passed by an old friend.