On September 1, Carmelo Silvestro was excited about the first hunt of the season. Silvestro hunts elk with a crossbow and he and two friends had gone to Madden in Rocky View County for the season opener. But things would soon take a terrible turn.
“It’s a date I look forward to every year,” Silvestro said in an interview with CBC’s Calgary Eyeopener.
Silvestro knows his way through the bush surrounding Madden, a small town roughly 50 kilometres north of Calgary. He’s hunted there in the past many times.
As their small hunting party geared up at the truck, his friend told him a local landowner mentioned that a mother grizzly and cubs had been spotted recently in the area.
It sent a chill down Silvestro’s spine.
In 2021, University of Calgary business school professor David Lertzman was killed trail running near Waiporous Village, an hour’s drive east of Madden, after a grizzly attacked from behind and sent him over a 300-metre embankment.
Silvestro had forgotten to pack bear spray. Luckily his friend had an extra canister to lend him. They parted ways planning to set up 200 yards apart in the trees and watch for elk.
A Sunny Day Gone Bad
“It was a gorgeous morning, the weather was absolutely beautiful that day,” said Silvestro, remembering as he hid among a pile of logs and prepared to wait.
Not long after, his hunting partner let out an elk bugle call hoping to attract some game. Then almost immediately he heard what sounded like footsteps coming down the trail. He wondered if it was an elk.
It wasn’t.
“To my surprise and shock when I turned and saw not one but four bears coming down the trail, it was a holy humph moment,” he said.
He took out his bear spray and hoped they would pass by the trail a mere 20 yards away. However, the mother suddenly stopped, reared up then ran back down the trail with her three cubs following.
She had caught his scent. There was a moment of relief, thinking the bears were spooked and would leave the area. The relief was short-lived.
The Attack
The mother grizzly stopped and allowed her cubs to pass by. Then she reversed direction and started to run back along the trail toward Silvestro before entering the woods nearby.
He could see her swinging her head from side to side looking for him.
“At 10 yards is when she locked eyes with me. That was the moment that I knew something bad was going to happen,” Silvestro said.
She charged and Silvestro managed to hit her with bear spray from a few feet away, but by that time the grizzly was in full charge.
“The impact was like being hit by a bus,” said Silvestro, his voice shaky from the still-fresh memory. It sent him flying “10 or 12 feet” from where he stood.
The grizzly was on him immediately, clawing and biting his back. He started screaming for help but was able to keep spraying the bear.
When the grizzly backed off, Silvestro rolled over and gave it another blast of pepper spray. Then the bear turned tail and was gone.
Lucky To Be Alive
The attack was over in seconds. He was alive but badly injured. His scapula, or shoulder blade, was shattered in pieces. He had several broken ribs, a bruised lung, and lacerations on his back, shoulder, and arms.
Three days after the attack, Alberta Fish and Wildlife Enforcement Services, determined with DNA analysis that the grizzly that attacked Silvestro is the same one that killed David Lertzman three years earlier.
Enforcement officers are still trying to locate the aggressive bear by “setting numerous traps and deploying low-flying aircraft,” according to a government news release.
Silvestro is now recovering at home. He knows he’ll go hunting again but isn’t sure when or where that will be.
“I’m still in a lot of pain physically and emotionally, of course,” he said.
He wants people to know that it could happen to anybody.
The province urges Albertans to carry bear spray and noisemakers and to report sightings of any female grizzlies with cubs or “sub-adult bears” in the Madden area to the Report-A-Poacher hotline at 1-800-642-3200.
