Joe Pendry was no stranger to a fight. The 63-year-old former boxer, elk hunter, and wilderness guide had spent decades in British Columbia’s rugged backcountry, but nothing could have prepared him for the morning of October 2nd. It was on that fateful morning that a mother grizzly bear would charge out of the brush and surprise the backcountry bushman by proceeding to clamp her jaws around his head.
What followed was a brutal, 10-minute struggle for survival, one that Pendry somehow won, only to lose his life three weeks later to a sudden medical complication.
The attack took place while Pendry was hunting alone near Fort Steele in the East Kootenay region when he inadvertently surprised a sow grizzly and her two older cubs. Conservation officers later described the encounter as a classic defensive attack: the mother bear, perceiving a threat to her young, launched herself at the hunter with terrifying speed.
She grabbed Pendry by the head, tearing off his lips and part of his scalp. He fired a single rifle shot into her leg, then dropped the gun and fought back the only way he knew how; with his fists. Punching the bear in the face with the same hands that once knocked out opponents in the boxing ring, he even went as far as mirroring a famous, yet unorthodox boxing move, and bit down on the bear’s ear with his teeth when the opportunity presented itself.
“She let go and backed off,” his wife Janice later told reporters. “His boxing saved his life—because not many people live through a grizzly attack.”
Bleeding profusely from catastrophic injuries which included shattered cheekbones, a broken nose, two broken arms, multiple broken ribs, and a severed finger, Pendry managed to pull out his phone. He called 911, then his son. His voice, calm despite the carnage, guided rescuers to his location.
A helicopter airlifted him to Kelowna General Hospital, where surgeons fought to rebuild his face and body over multiple operations.
For weeks, Pendry defied the odds. He walked the hospital halls. He joked with nurses. He told his family he couldn’t wait to get back to the mountains.
“He had a heart of gold and the spirit of a warrior,” his niece Rachel Wells wrote in a family statement. “The outdoors was his church, his peace, his purpose.”
Just one day after being moved from ICU to a trauma ward, Pendry suffered a sudden blood clot. He went into cardiac arrest. Despite frantic efforts by medical staff, he could not be revived.
He died on October 25, 2025—exactly three weeks to the day after the attack.
“Dad suffered a complication and went into cardiac arrest,” his daughter Janessa Higgerty announced on social media. “The nurses and doctors did everything they could, but unfortunately they were unable to revive him. He fought hard until the very end.”
B.C. Conservation Officer Service investigators located a dead female grizzly in the area just a few days after the altercation. DNA tests later confirmed it was the attacking sow; and that she had died of sepsis from the bullet wound in her leg. Her two cubs were not found but are considered old enough to survive independently, according to WildSafeBC.
The sow that attacked Pendry
News of Pendry’s death spread quickly across Canada and beyond. A GoFundMe launched by his family raised nearly $20,000 in days to cover medical bills and travel costs for loved ones.
A memorial service is planned for next month.
Rest in peace, Joe.
