Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/769056
92 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S "That's fine. Just call me." As I said, it was more an order than a request. We shook hands—no, that's not right; we shared a big bear hug—and I left him peering out his door at me as I climbed into my truck and headed north. I won't go into all the details here, except to say that eight days later I killed a 300-pound bear at six yards at 9:30 p.m., less than half an hour before dark that far north. By the time I got him field-dressed and out of the woods and back to my cabin by the river at Joe Hackl's place, it was nigh on 2:00 a.m. We put him in the shed to skin out the next morning, and I must confess, a couple of beers were involved as I shared the story with Joe of how the big bear had surprised me when he showed up chasing one of his smaller associates. And as I walked alone down the trail to my cabin beneath the northern lights, I pulled my flashlight from my side pouch to check the time. It was pushing 3:00 a.m. Alan, I thought. I really should call him. But no, he would surely be asleep. I'll call him in the morning, I promised myself, then took a couple more steps before stopping abruptly. You dummy! I thought angrily to myself. THIS is why you came! So I retraced my steps back up the trail, past the shed and up to Joe's kitchen door. He saw me coming. "Sorry," I said sheepishly, "but can I use your phone?" After three tries, I got through to a young operator in Thunder Bay and explained to her what I needed to do, fully expecting my brother's phone to ring several times before he answered. It rang only once. "Hello!!" "I have a collect call from Mike. Will you accept the charges?" said the sweet- voiced operator. "YES I WILL!!" said my brother. "Alan! I got him!" Please forgive all the capital letters and my excessive use of exclamation marks here, but at the time they were flying around everywhere. "I KNOW!" came his reply. He obviously didn't understand what I was saying. "NO . . . " I tried to clarify. "I got a bear!" determined to go back the following year for round two. But alas, he simply could not get away from work and school the next year, and I had to go alone. His instructions to me before I hit the road were adamant: "When you get a bear, call me as soon as you can find a telephone," he ordered. I noted to myself that he didn't say "If," but "When." "Absolutely," I promised. "But you know, it may take a while to get a bear out of the bush country. And I'll probably have to call you collect." told her he'd run into the door frame. Back then, there wasn't all that much the doctors could do to affect the chronic bronchitis and asthma that racked his weakened lungs. And so he and God did it themselves, and he eventually turned into the strongest man I've ever known—not to mention ten times the hunter and fisherman I would ever be. In 1985 he and I took our bows and our hopes into the far northern reaches of Ontario in pursuit of black bear. And though the closest we came to seeing a bear were the big tracks we found one evening atop our own, we were the brothers Altizer, l-r: Alan, Mike, and Jack on a wild turkey hunt some 30 years ago. the brothers have been known to communicate with one another in sometimes strange and mysterious ways.