It can be tiring, for a start. Four hours’ worth has been compared to eight hours’ hard labour and double that when long-lining, all due to the concentration, particularly in mountainous areas and going in and out of clearings all day long (or over 120 landings a day with heli-skiing), where you cannot afford to let your attention slip. Do this for 21 days on the trot (sometimes up to 42) and you will also find you need to keep physically fit in order to cope.
However, don’t expect to be flying all day and every day. There will be a lot of waiting around in the back of your machine in remote places, so you will need plenty of books. A typical day on duty may be up to 10 or 12 hours long, within which you might fly for about 3. The ratio will be greater in the Corporate world (though not always).
You also have to remember that helicopters are generally used because there is no other suitable means of transport, which means going to places nobody's ever heard of in strange weather, and not being home for weeks on end. In Canada, this is very much part of the job, so think twice if you don’t think you can cope. If you want to get home at night, have a look at corporate, offshore or instructing.
Finally, some of it involves making money out of other peoples’ misfortunes, as when reporting on disasters, etc., which is an aspect I have never really liked, but helicopters save lives, too and, as I said, it’s the only thing some people want to do, whether for the flying or
the lifestyle, so let’s have a look at how you become a helicopter pilot.

Getting Started
This is the most difficult bit – the cost of helicopter time is so great that it’s almost impossible to do without help, maybe from parents, or being trained in the Forces. Having said that, there are plenty of people who have done it, so it isn’t impossible, but these will tend be found in Canada or the USA, where it’s considerably cheaper. In Europe, where it’s over twice as expensive and you need more hours to get your licence, anyone who can afford their own training would, in terms of pure financial reward, have to think twice before working as a pilot, because that sort of money can be considerably more productive elsewhere. At least then you can fly when you want to.
Mind you, it’s ultimately not that different in North America. Even though you only need 100 (Canada) or 150 (USA) hours to get your ticket, you are still usually unemployable, unless your family owns the company (and even then the insurance companies or customers would have something to say), so you either have to do a couple of years as a hangar rat, that is, washing windscreens until your company sees what you’re like and trains you up, or buy the hours yourself. To be even remotely interesting to an employer (or, more correctly, a customer), you need at least 500 hours, sometimes 1000 or 1500, or some sort of specialised training, such as a mountain course (or both) and maybe an instrument rating, depending on the job.