LUNGS heaving in the thin cold air and on shaky legs, I turned to look back down the valley to where we had started our climb. The truck was a small white dot about 2km away, where we’d left it at sunrise on this sub-zero April morning. Both Dan and I welcomed the break in our ascent, recovering our breath and taking in the splendour of the mountains to the southwest of Barkly East. The sun had cleared the peaks to the east and was painting colour on the slopes opposite. To the west the pinnacle of ‘Kopje Alleen’ reflected the sunlight back at us – significant in that it would be a valuable landmark for us in the following hours. It was a good day to be up on a mountain.
I had roped in my good friend, Dan Haupt, on a fallow deer hunt which I had been planning for around 40 years. Yup, for the first time around 1983, and ever since watching Robert de Niro using a Remington M700 BDL LH in the mountains of Pennsylvania, I’d been hoping one day to have my turn to hunt deer in the mountains somewhere. I arranged to hunt on a property close to Barkly East, and Dan and I travelled down over the April long weekend.
