Just over a week after the hunting season opener for bow elk, Carmelo Silvestro is sharing his near-death experience after surviving a bear attack near Calgary.
“I see it every time, before I close my eyes when I go to bed,” said Silvestro.
“The way she jumped and had her paws wide open and mouth wide open at me…. was just… something you see in a horror movie.”
His hunting party gained access to an area west of Madden late Sunday morning.
The landowner warned them a sow grizzly and cubs had been spotted in the region.
“That’s not an area where you would expect to see a grizzly,” said Silvestro, who hadn’t brought bear spray or a gun with him on the trip.
Fortunately, his hunting partner had an extra can and gave it to Silvestro before they parted ways.
It would likely save his life.
After a series of elk calls, he heard footsteps. They weren’t elk. He turned to see a mother grizzly and three sub-adult cubs moving towards him.
“They were large. I would probably put them at about 250 lbs each, just the cubs alone,” Silvestro recalled.
They continued along the trail until, at about 20 yards away, they seemed to spook and started to run off. But the mother turned.
“That’s when I knew she was looking for me,” said Silvestro.
“I watched her turn her head side to side and then probably when she was about 10 yards away, locked eyes with me and in that moment, I knew something was going to happen here.”
He was able to use the bear spray as the grizzly launched towards him. Despite that, Silvestro said the bear hit him like a bus.
What happened next would leave permanent scars, bites, bruises, broken ribs, even a broken scapula. But thanks, in part, to his partner’s bear spray, he survived.
“She was on my back and all I could think of was turtle and cover my vitals,” recalled Silvestro. “And all of a sudden she let off her hold and I remember rolling over and seeing her right there.
“I let her have it right in her chest.”
The news shook his wife, who initially thought his hunting partner was pranking her.
“I came home from the hospital on the second night and I stopped in the driveway,” recalled Gina Silvestro. “It was dark and I just started crying. I said, ‘I could be coming home to a very empty house.'”
DNA tests have since confirmed the same mother grizzly was involved in an altercation that killed Calgary professor David Lertzman three years ago near the village of Waiparous, about 68 kilometres northwest of Calgary.
In an interview with Global News, Lertzman’s widow suggested the grizzly was doing what any mother would to protect her offspring, and that she be spared.
But Fish and Wildlife officers said, because of the bear’s history and the area it was found in, the grizzly fits the criteria to be euthanized.
Silvestro agrees.
As for what ended the attack, Silvestro can only explain the bear’s sudden pause — with his faith.
A year ago, his mother lost a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
“I certainly think that in that moment she was definitely the momma bear, or the bigger momma bear, looking out for me,” said Silvestro. “I’m sure she pulled that grizzly off my back.”