Nice to know there are still things to learn in this job.

With our normal helicopter charter service declaring bankruptcy (having nothing to do with their helicopters, but instead a result of the wings falling off a couple of their fire-fighting slurry bombers), we were forced to lease larger, more expensive choppers for our deer classifications this winter. More expensive, as in $650 per hour, vs $350 per hour.

But with the larger bird, we were able to put up a second observer. My neighbor simply used a warden as an observer in the front seat, and he sat in back to record data and locations on the GPS. Maybe efficient, but one of the wardens remarked that he didn't really need to go along. Without a tape recorder, he couldn't record what he saw, just double check the observations of the fellow behind him. There was nothing for him to do that couldn't be done by one person.

So, on our flight, we tried a different arrangement. Me in front, with tape recorder, reporting the composition of every group of deer we saw. The warden in back with the GPS, keying our location in its memory, while providing a second check for those sneaky little yearling bucks with the tiny antlers shorter than their ears that are so hard to spot as they go bounding away in the sage.

On good snow cover, even the small antlers show up, but not with the spotty snow we had over most of our country the past two days.

In theory, the new division of labor worked well. Gave the easily nauseated observer one less thing to worry about, and all the benefits of a second pair of eyes spotting deer.

Today I discovered a drawback to our system.

Today I sat down and transcribed the flight tape (always fun to hear yourself struggling not to retch, trust me). Most of the time, it went well. Easily matched each group of deer with their appropriate location extracted from the GPS memory.

But I'm only half done. Seems there was this one stretch, where we ran into quite a few groups of deer, one right after another, where I have counts on thirteen groups of animals.

The warden punched in only eight locations.

No, he wasn't sleeping behind me. In typical game warden fashion, he obviously decided to lighten the work load by only punching in one location for two or three closely spaced groups of deer.

Now, if one wants to be able to map out the deer winter range, and specifically identify which pieces of habitat are most important to your herd, that is not a good thing. Knowing there were thirty-some deer somewhere around this point of ground, without any reference as to how far somewhere might extend, is not the same thing as knowing there were deer here, here, and here.

And it's not as though punching in more GPS locations would have been difficult. You hit the "Mark" button, then the "Enter" button.

That's it.

And it's not as though we were limited in how many locations we could store. Well, yes, we were, but we only used 70 out of 500 waypoints available, so there were plenty to spare.

And yes, we could have solved this problem in the chopper if I had simply announced when I was recording a new group, rather than assuming he would see the groups the same as I. Important tip for next year.

And I'm certainly not going to say anything about it to him, or anyone else other than here, 'cause he went on and flew another three hours without me. That sort of Christmas gift you cannot repay.

But geez, it took me hours to get these locations mapped out digitally and get them sorted as to which were where, and then make my best call on where the other five groups were on the map (which wasn't so hard, once I had the eight pegged).

And that was my day today.

Other than, it snowed again, maybe a centimeter or so, this evening.

A hasty snapshot out the window at sunrise yesterday, as I hustled through town en route to the airport.