All the good omens were there.

Check the weather at seven o'clock, and it's 22 degrees, zero wind (let me repeat that, "zero wind") with gusts to 8 mph.

For most of this month, winds have been 20-30 mph with gusts well in excess of 50 mph.

Minutes later, the temperature had risen to 24 degrees, and still no wind.

The warden flying with us had commented, after his flights yesterday, that the Bell Ranger was the best observer's platform you could hope for. Large, stable, wide field of view. And he turned me on to a new drug, bonine. The same active incredient as the low-doze dramamine (which I have not tried). He and the neighboring warden to the northeast swear by this new concoction for combatting motion sickness.

The warden also logically suggested that I ride in the front seat. Better to see from, since I was the one using the tape recorder to record data, but also much less likely to induce nausea, as opposed to the back seat where all you have is a side view.

To top it off, the pilot, upon hearing my request for knowing where the sick sacks were, happily replied that we wouldn't need any. No one has ever gotten sick on any of his flights. Not once, in 15 years of flying.

So, even being bonine-enhanced, it was good to know we were going to have a good day.

I threw up before the second radio check-in.

So much for his record.

Flying conditions were near ideal when we started, but gradually deteriorated as the day wore on. Embarrassing that the first four or five groups of deer were first spotted by the pilot or the guy in the back seat, not the one sitting up front who's supposed to be observing. My only excuses being the lack of snow, and lack of sunlight. Bit once I got my eyes trained to search farther out, I did okay.

Our regular pilot retired this year, so this one was new to our country. Didn't know where we normally fly, where to look in the hills and dunes for "our" deer. Spent more time than I wanted directing the pilot, left of this ridge, a little lower on the slope, down the top of this ridge. Perfectly understandable, but annoying just the same when you're concentrating on keeping your guts out of your throat.

Seemed like most of our deer were in larger groups, from 10 to 52 animals at a time. Hard enough to classify from the ground, and with the faster Ranger, quite a few looping turns to circle back and pass a group a second, or even third, time.

The Ranger covers ground fast, though. Had the fueling truck waiting for us at the usual spot, where the Hiller would be running low after two and a half hours of flight. With the Ranger, we had two hours of fuel left by the time we reached that neck of the woods, and ended up making a lot of ad hoc decisions on where to fly, saving our highest concentration of deer, on the ridge leading to the fuel truck, until almost ten o'clock.

Bear Mountain is a sand-covered rock pile, adorned with pines, that sits in the middle of the gap between the two mountains ranges that form the northeast rim of the Great Divide Basin. Look at satellite images of the area, and you can tell the winds funnel through this gap just by how the sand dunes are all racing into it. So I wasn't surprised when our pass over the top of the mountain changed into a mad dash to the northeast side, the pilot keeping our speed up so's we wouldn't lose lift and plummet. Went well past the mountain before he even attempted a turn, which instead turned into a stop.

"Seems to be a little windy out here," came from the back seat.

"You don't even want to know how bad," the pilot said, as we broke our unintended hover and slowly began to creep up the mountain.

"How bad?" came the stupid query from the back.

"Over 50 knots," was the answer.

Even at full rpm, we would be barely crawling against the headwind as we struggled back into the basin where we belonged.

In the end, I lost my guts three times in three hours. Whether out of kindness, or just to get the puker out of their craft, the warden volunteered to fly the second flight by himself.

I took him up on his offer.

When wind sweeps across a basin and crosses a ridgeline, whether high mountains or just low rock, it rolls and curls as it plummets down the other side. Just exactly like the vortices off a jets wingtips. A dangerous place to be if you're in an aircraft, any aircraft. Physics being what it is, you can't stay airborne if the air supporting you literally just drops away, or a hardened crest comes slamming down on your roof.

Most of the ridgelines in our country run almost straight east-west. So with our prevailing winds from the southwest, flying the south side of anything was fine and simple. But the deer get tired of having wind in their faces and ears, and often take shelter just over the top, on the snowy, bumpy, dangerous northern side.

To his credit, only once did the pilot announce "I'm outta here!" and bail us off a north face to the right. (You're always flying the north sides from east to west, to keep the wind into your face. It's tailwinds that are most dangerous to helicopters. If the wind, in effect, catches up to your tail, you lose lift and drop like a chunk of, well, metal and plastic.)

The third and final upchuck of the day was on the north side of a long ridge. Passed over a large grove of pines, and was surprised to see a reddish animal looking back up at us, rather than the dark grey of mule deer in the winter.

Elk.

A gorgeous bull, stepping out from behind a tree, highlighted by the white snow behind. Above him were a cow and calf, snuggled up against other trees. Then five or six more bulls.

Then I lost it.

As the warden behind me oohed and aahed about the cervid glory spread out below us (14 bulls with the cow and calf), I had my face in a bag. All the while wanting to grab the camera for a shot, as the pilot held us perfectly still. And unable to move any muscle except those involved in evacuating my gut.

Phizer and their Bonine can kiss my butt.

The elk were pretty, though.