EAST BUTLER - Completing the Super Slam was important to Terry Steinheiser - important enough to risk his life doing so.

The Butler resident bagged a 9-foot, 1,000-pound polar bear near Grise Fiord in Nunavut, Canada - 250 miles from the North Pole - March 31.

Steinheiser, 44, bagged a grizzly bear in Alaska in 1994, a Pennsylvania black bear in Marionville in 1997 and a brown bear in Alaska in 1999.

Believed to be the first Butler County resident to complete the Super Slam of bear hunting, Steinheiser said he might be the first in the state to pull off the feat.

"I decided to go for it back in 1999," he said. "This is something very few people have done. But to be honest, I never thought I'd get the chance to get a polar bear."

That chance popped up in late February. Steinheiser learned of a hunter cancellation in a polar bear hunting exhibition led by native Inuit guides in northern Canada.

"I had to be ready in three weeks and I was able to do that," Steinheiser said.

He left March 16 for Resolute, from where a small plane took his three-person hunting contingent to Grise Fiord for a 19-day polar bear hunt.

The temperature never got above 38 degrees below zero. Inside the tent where the trio slept, it never got warmer than 15 below.

"I can't describe how cold it was," Steinheiser said. "It was brutal."

Because of snowstorms, blizzards and whiteouts caused by blowing snow, only five of the 19 days were actually spent hunting.

Steinheiser spent one night wondering if he was going to see the next day when a blizzard hit and 70-kilometer winds pounded at the tent.

"I was scared - real scared," Steinheiser said. "I had a satellite phone with me and called my wife to tell her I loved her.

"Honestly, I wasn't sure if we were gonna come out of that. If we lost our tent, I doubt we could have survived in those elements," he added.

Steinheiser's wife of 23 years, Kathy, was with their three daughters when he called.

"I asked him if he was OK," she said. "It sounded like a freight train in the background. I was scared for him, scared for all of us."

Steinheiser wound up losing another day of hunting, as his group had to dig out of six feet of snow. Temperatures dipped as low as 52 below zero and he suffered frostbite on all 10 of his fingers.

"You are going to get frostbite in those conditions," Steinheiser said. "Some guys got it worse than I did.

"There was another trip scheduled in May that I could have taken. March was not a smart month to go up there. I won't do it again."

He won't have to.

On the 17th day of the trip, after watching nine polar bears get away because of poor visibility in the elements, Steinheiser got his polar bear.

Even then, he had to be patient.

"You sit on top of icebergs to look for them because the bears are looking for cracks in the ice to catch seals to eat," he said. "I spotted one at 8:30 a.m."

Polar bears are pursued by dog sled. Steinheiser chased the bear for 18 miles - the sleds moving at about 5 mph - and killed it at 4:45 p.m.

Steinheiser estimated his hunting costs alone to bag the Super Slam at $70,000.

"I've always been a hunter, but I really got into it in 1991 when I won a moose hunt in Alaska in a raffle," he said. "That was my first big game hunt."

The polar bear expedition won't be his last.

"I'm going for the Grand Slam of sheep next - the dall sheep, stone sheep, big-horn and desert sheep," he said. "Hopefully, I can do it within five years."

His wife simply smiled at the thought.

"It's a worry for me, some of these trips, but he loves to do this and he calls every day," she said. "Everyone in the family hunts."