Not quite four hours...

of this:

Only, not quite that clear. Or easy to see in direct light like that. No, we were watching video of four or five elk herds, all taken from a bouncing, twirling helicopter.

Some of it pretty good. Some not so much.

Some worthless. You couldn't even tell how many elk there were in one group, much less how many were cows, calves, bulls and spikes. Our best guess was about 60 brown and tan smudges.

And on the footage where you could see what some of the elk were?

Probably one of of every eight or ten was debatable. So we would track that elk, frame by frame, maybe up to 15 to 20 frames, back and forth, back and forth until we could agree what it was.

For almost four hours.

I'm really kinda tired of looking at elk butts now.

And did I mention we were doing this in a living room. With pumpernickel cookies and chestnut coffee?

And three grade schoolers and preschoolers in the room, one playing the piano and the other two fighting over pirate ships?

Fun times.

I don't know who was happier to leave... me, or the two heelers who'd been freezing their tails off in the truck for four hours.