So, the helicopter flight was closer to 90 minutes rather than 60.

And the retching was more like thrice, rather than once.

But I still managed to take ~175 pictures in those 90 minutes.

Most of them a waste of electrons. Either because we were flying too fast too close to the ground, yielding a bunch of blurry images.

Or the early morning sun was shining in my side of the bird, throwing a bright glare across the curved plexiglass window. Or, the sun was coming in from the front or side, throwing the reflection of my flaming orange flight suit onto the inside of the same window.

Or, I just plain aimed the camera wrong. Didn't dare actually look through the viewfinder when we were spinning around up there, you know.

And it didn't help being in the back seat.

Everything I saw was whizzing by as the pilot and observer up front were running down on the bouncing white asses of fleeing deer.

Not to mention, my helmet was resting against the ceiling. Had to hunch over to keep from banging my head when the air got bumpy.

Me? My only job was to hit the buttons on the GPS to mark the location of each deer group.

A challenging responsibility that I handled with distinction.

We started off with safety instructions, before even entering the chopper. Important thing I learned is...

In the event of a crash, make sure you hit three red buttons (and this is predicated upon the assumption that the pilot is incapable of these three simple tasks).

First is the red switch in the middle of the pilot console.

This is the ELB. Emergency Locator Beacon. Unlike those in fixed wing aircraft, which turn on whenever there is a sufficiently strong bump to the plane (even some bad landings), bumps on a helicopter are common. So, the beacon telling rescue crews where to find your wreck of a craft won't tell them anything unless somebody survives and remembers to turn it on.

Important thing to know.

Then, to the lower right, there is another red switch, with a protective red flip cover. This disengages the rotors.

Yeah, if you come down on the ground wrong, you probably don't want the engine to keep turning those giant cuisinart blades around and around.

And then, on the console over the pilot's head, is the third important red switch.

Kills the electrical system. Engine should stop, and you're less likely to have sparks zapping around.

Always a good thing when you've crashed on the ground in a vehicle filled with 100 percent octane fuel.

Then, of course, there is the usual safety reminder to stay away from the rapidly spinning cuisinart blades at the back of the chopper.

The sun was barely over the horizon when we started our flight.

This route is basically a box pattern, starting south along the cliffs for ten miles. Here we were surprised to find a cow elk, where no elk has any business being.

Then it's east along more cliffs for 15 miles to the river.

Took this shot

just because we surprised a cottontail that was snoozing in the warm sunshine at the bottom of the rocks.

Yeah. We're flying that low.

Then we fly down along the river, which we found to still have some open water, despite the bitter cold the past week or so.

No deer in the trees,

but found quite a few near the old abandoned stone ranch house.

Then it is back along the hogback towards home.

Don't have the numbers yet, but it seemed like we found more deer than usual.

Wasn't until we were near the end of the flight that we finally saw any decent numbers of pronghorn.

'Course, maybe the best view of the whole flight was this one.

The chopper. Leaving. Without me. We had one more chunk of country to fly, but it was 45 miles from town, and in the same direction the helicopter needed to fly for their next job. Logical solution to minimize cost for ferry time on the chopper (at almost $700/hr) was to have one of us fly to classify deer, and the other to drive north 50 miles to retrieve the observer, so the helicopter could then continue on to their next town.

Guess who volunteered to stay on the ground and drive the truck?

Out of all the pictures I took during the flight, though, there was one I really wanted. From down by the river.

And I got it.