Canadian outfitter and GSCO member Bob Fontana was killed on July 18 in Africa. Bob was hunting in Tanzania and was in relatively thick cover when a Cape buffalo charged and killed him. The PH only had time to get off one shot before the buffalo reached Bob.

On behalf of all Grand Slam Club/Ovis members, I would like to express our sincerest condolences to the Fontana family. Bob and his wife Anna have been great friends and wonderful supporters of our organization. Conservation has lost a great man. Our prayers are with Anna and the entire family during this time of mourning.

Sincerely,
Dennis Campbell
Executive Director
Grand Slam Club/Ovis

The short, happy life of Robert Fontana
A controversial B.C. hunting guide lived by the game and died by the game

Vancouver Sun
July 24, 2004
By: Derrick Penner

East Kootenay hunting guide Robert Fontana's death by a charging cape buffalo in the rolling hills of Tanzania's Masai Steppe last Saturday came with a cold twist.

Fontana loved to hunt the famously massive, notoriously aggressive buffalo more than any other animal on his trips to Africa, said longtime friend and business partner Gary Nutini.

"The challenge is to be able to go out and hunt that species and do it as cleanly and as safely as you can," he added.

Fontana wasn't stalking the buffalo that killed him, though. His hunting party had headed out that morning after kudu, a species of antelope, when they stumbled across the lone cape beast.

And Fontana died as he had lived, doing something he loved and held to passionately just as he had done in his British Columbia home.

Fontana was a staunch conservationist, yet was also a fierce defender of the right to hunt, especially grizzly bears, a position that sometimes made him a controversial figure.

He was a renowned guide, who worked in southern B.C. and Northwest Territories, and a former president of the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C., his leadership of which helped keep grizzly bear hunting open in the province, said association general manager, Dale Drown.

Nutini added that, above all, Fontana loved to be in the wild outdoors, either out in the Rocky Mountains with a big pack train of horses behind him or, more recently, trekking the rugged backcountry of Africa.

He was "controversial in some ways with a lot of people," Nutini said, "but he was very passionate. He lived life like today was his last day." At his death, Fontana was 46 years old and is survived by his wife, Anna, and daughters from a previous marriage, Callie and Kaitlin.

Fontana had made three trips to Africa. One was to Zimbabwe, the last two to Tanzania. Nutini had gone on the second and said his friend loved the wildness of it and the remoteness. To him, it had a pioneering, "wild west" appeal.

Bill Hanlon, another of Fontana's friends from Sparwood, added that hunting dangerous game is part of Africa's lure.

"That's what brought Bob there numerous times; that was the dream of Hemingway and the people who wrote of Africa and told stories of hunting the big five dangerous game species of Africa," he said, the big five being the elephant, leopard, lion, rhinoceros and the cape buffalo.

Hanlon went on his own trip to Africa in 2002, though he went out for leopard and not buffalo.

On this occasion, Fontana had taken his uncle Leno Fontana on the 21-day hunt, which was intended to be a trip of a lifetime.

They went to Arusha in northern Tanzania and journeyed three hours by road south into the arid rolling countryside.

Nutini said the trip was near its end last Saturday when the party headed out in search of kudu, an athletic antelope prized for its spiral antlers.

The cape buffalo, however, is renowned for its brutish mass. They only grow to between one and 1.7 metres in height (3.3 to five feet) but can reach a weight of 900 kilograms (2,000 pounds). And with horns that can span up to one metre, cape buffalo can fend off lion attacks.

In the brush of Tanzania, Nutini said, the grasses can reach six feet high, which is apparently what Fontana's party of three other hunters, Fontana's uncle and their professional hunter faced.

Nutini heard of the circumstances in an early Sunday morning phone call from Leno Fontana and Bismarck, N.D., hunter John Erickson, one of their hunting companions.

"They were walking single-file through the brush and tall grass and must've stepped on, for lack of a better word, this cape buffalo," said Nutini.

"They just stumbled across this bull, probably laying down in the brush, and he got up and charged. So there wasn't time for anybody to shoot anything, or self-defence."

The animal knocked Fontana to his knees and "steamrolled" him, Nutini added, and left his friend dead.

"It was a really quick deal, over quicker than it started."

No one else was seriously hurt in the charge though Nutini said the party's professional hunter was also knocked over. Usually, Nutini said, it is hunters facing a wounded bull buffalo who are in danger, "but in the end, it was a freak that got him."

Hanlon learned of his friend's death when he got out of the bush after a five-day packhorse trip into the Purcell Wilderness.

One of his travelling companions made cell- phone contact with his wife, "and she had this horrible news," he said.

"It really rocked us, because here's a person who we thought was 10-feet tall and bulletproof, and this happens," Hanlon said. "We didn't get the whole story, just that he was gored by a buffalo."

They're still trying to get their minds around the how and why, Hanlon said, especially those who have an idea of what a cape buffalo is and what they are capable of, and realizing that Fontana knew the same or more.

On the opposite side of Fontana's passion for hunting, however, was a compassion for nurturing wildlife.

David Beranek, a friend, fellow guide and biologist who first hunted with Fontana in 1982 when he was in high school and Fontana was in his first, short-lived career, as a teacher, recalled that Fontana was blown away simply by being among the abundant African wildlife and the culture of the people.

"Every day he went out and there were all these unique creatures," Beranek said. "We have quite a few, but the numbers and diversity [of wildlife in Africa] never ceased to amaze him.

"Whether it was a hedgehog or a rhinoceros it didn't matter: he loved to see it."

Beranek recalled that sharing that sense of wonder about his own guiding territory in the upper Elk River Valley with clients was a point of pride for Fontana.

Perched on the continental divide, the territory is similar in spectacle to Jasper, Beranek said, and Fontana was disappointed if hunters didn't "stop and smell the roses," and take some of that experience home with them.

And he loved for them to see wildlife, even if they didn't always get a kill. If clients were hunting elk, bear or moose, Fontana wanted them to see lots of those animals.

It is what Fontana grew up with, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, father and uncles, coal miners from the pre-Sparwood community of Michel, who hunted and fished the wildlife-rich Flathead Valley south of Fernie.

He learned to fight for wildlife in the early 1980s when a coal company proposed putting the Sage Creek mine in the valley. Fontana was a member of the Fernie Rod & Gun Club at the time and became a key member of a cross-border group, called the Flathead coalition, which included noted Alberta wildlife writer Andy Russell and influential politicians in Montana.

Fontana saw the Flathead as a place where miners could recreate, Beranek said. And with the cumulative impacts of five active coal mines already in the region, he questioned the need to disturb an intact valley with productive wildlife populations for another mine.

Beranek said many people leave the East Kootenays to chase jobs, but Fontana's Flathead campaign helped crystallize his reputation as someone who would stick around and fight for the region.

"He was a man who went away, came back and showed his passion for what was here and what was important, you know" he added.

"He was a warrior in whatever cause he took up," Hanlon said. "If it was for keeping the north Elk Valley wild or the Flathead Valley wild or for conservation, he always had wildlife and hunting at heart."

Fontana left his brief teaching career in 1984 to guide and outfit full time and he took on leadership roles both in the industry and wildlife circles. Over the years, he served as president of the B.C. Wildlife Association and Southern B.C. Guides and Outfitters Association. He was also heavily involved in the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, North American Wild Sheep and Safari Club International.

Drown, general manager of the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C., credits Fontana's leadership during a four-year presidency with pulling it out of the 1970s to become a well-financed, forward-looking lobbying organization.

Maintaining the right to hunt grizzly bears was one of the campaigns Fontana took on as head of the guide association and Drown added that he was a formidable advocate for guides.

Drown said Fontana used his first-hand experience observing bears while guiding in the upper Elk River Valley gave to challenge provincial wildlife officials on the notion that populations are declining.

Drown said the Guide Outfitters Association has always taken the position, "which was Bob's position," that grizzly populations are significant and growing, though others argue the bear's numbers are dwindling.

The province has established a scientific panel to study grizzly management and Drown is convinced they wouldn't have got this far without Fontana's knowledge, derived from direct experience, and his perseverance.

"From time to time in an industry, you'll have a leader who comes along and, through his drive, moves it forward in leaps and bounds," Drown said. "Bob was exactly that type of person."

Drown said it helped too that his wife, Anna, was a wildlife biologist and they were very much a team.

Beranek also joined Fontana on many of his campaigns, including the fight to keep grizzly hunting open, and he didn't see any contradiction in wanting to hunt the bears and trying to preserve them.

The two would often lead grizzly bear viewing and photograph tours between hunting season, so Fontana wasn't just interested in hunting. But he recognized that if people want bears around "for whatever reason, you have to do your damnedest to protect them."

However, for all the guiding and horseback riding they had done together in the backcountry, Beranek suspects he will miss the times they spent in meeting rooms with bureaucrats arguing their case for wildlife management or hunting rights.

"Some of the most intense moments we spent together were just developing strategy or travelling to meetings," he recalled. "It was just like playing a sport at an extreme level. You live and die by it."

Hanlon said Fontana had "a big footprint" with involvement in many organizations, and his absence will be felt.

Nutini, in a telephone interview from the Fontanas' 40-acre ranch at Mayook Settlement, near Cranbrook, said that Anna Fontana has already decided to keep her husband's business, Elk Valley Bighorn Outfitters, going.

Fontana was born in Natal, a mining community near Sparwood, then grew up in nearby Michel and Sparwood itself.

Besides his wife and daughters, Fontana had a twin sister, Barbara Endicott, uncles Leno Fontana and Louis Fontana as well as nieces, nephews and stepfather Art Burrows.

Fontana's family and friends have planned a memorial service they are calling "a celebration of life" for Sunday, starting 1 p.m. at Cranbrook's Key City Theatre.

Nutini said mourners from around the world -- guides, hunters, friends from the conservation community and perhaps even politicians -- are welcome to come and show their condolences.

In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to a scholarship fund in Fontana's name.