Wrangler, horse heroes to appear on Letterman

A Whitefish wrangler and the horse that helped her scare a charging grizzly bear away from an 8-year-old Illinois boy are booked on “The Late Show with David Letterman” next week.

Erin Bolster was guiding a group of eight people on a trail ride near West Glacier on July 30 when a white-tailed deer followed closely by a grizzly bear crossed their path.

Seven horses turned and went back down the trail on the Flathead National Forest while the boy’s horse, Scout, ran into the timber, becoming the bear’s next target.

“The deer peeled off and joined the horses sprinting down the trail,” Bolster said. “So the bear just continued running right past me. I’m not sure the bear even knew the roles had changed, but now it was chasing a horse instead of a deer.”

The boy’s father was unable to get his horse to turn around to help his son.

“The last thing he saw over his shoulder as his horse ran away was the grizzly chasing his boy,” Bolster said.

Bolster was able to get her horse, Tonk, to follow the bear.

“The boy was bent over, feet out of the stirrups, clutching the saddle horn and the horse’s neck,” she said.

She said she screamed and yelled, but the bear was growling and snarling and focusing on Scout.

“As it tried to circle back toward Scout, I realized I had to get Tonk to square off and face the bear,” she said. “We had to get the bear to acknowledge us. We did. We got its attention — and the bear charged.

“So I charged at the bear,” she told The Spokesman-Review. “I had no hesitation, honestly. Nothing in my body was going to let that little boy get hurt by that bear.”

She and Tonk had to charge at the bear three times before they finally hazed it away.

“The boy had landed in some beargrass and was OK,” she said.

Bolster pulled the boy up on Tonk, grabbed Scout’s lead and headed down the trail toward the rest of the group.

The boy “was fine, and I got my biggest tip of the season,” Bolster said.

Tonk — a cross between a quarter horse and a draft horse — had been leased by Swan Mountain Outfitters for the summer.

“Some of the horses I’ve ridden would have absolutely refused to do what Tonk did; others would have thrown me off in the process,” Bolster said.

His courage moved Bolster: She bought the horse.

“After what he did that day, he had to be mine,” she said.

Bolster’s story earned her an invitation to the Late Show, and producers wanted to book the horse, too.

“They decided they really wanted Tonk out there, and they want to make him and me a bigger feature,” Bolster told The Spokesman-Review in an email. “So in order to allow Tonk a more relaxed five-day trip to NYC (in his own climate-controlled van, no less) and to schedule me on a date when they could allot me two segments, the producer set us to film and air on Oct. 11.

“I’m quite excited and I think Tonk will be a real treat on camera,” she wrote.

Bolster’s story has also earned her marriage proposals, job offers and a lot of new Facebook friends.

She set up an account for people who have offered to chip in for Tonk’s winter boarding.

“I go out and give Tonk a carrot every time something new and good comes out of this,” she said.

That’s a lot of carrots.