Bear chaser and horse scheduled for Letterman show
SALEM – A horse enthusiast from Catawba who rode after a grizzly bear to save an 8-year-old boy will appear with her horse to talk about their adventure next week on Tuesday, Oct. 11, on the “Late Show with David Letterman.”
Erin Bolster, who lives in Montana, is scheduled to appear with her horse, Tonk, on the 11:35 p.m. show that runs locally on WDBJ-TV.
According to Bolster, television producers are transporting her hero horse to New York in style in a climate-controlled van, and paying for overnight lodging at stables along the way.
Erin Bolster and her horse, Tonk, will appear on "Late Night with David Letterman" next week. The two ran off a grizzly bear to save an 8-year-old boy on his first trail ride.
Bolster says she and Tonk will have two segments on the popular late-night show.
“I’m quite excited and I think Tonk will be a real treat on camera,” she wrote on an outdoor blog of “The Sportsman-Review” newspaper in Missoula, Mont.
Earlier this summer the 25-year-old resident of the Montana community of Whitefish was leading a family of six and two other riders on horseback through Flathead National Forest.
About 15-minutes into what was scheduled to be an hour-long ride, a deer ran in front of them, Bolster said, followed closely by a grizzly.
Seven of the horses bolted or ran for the stable, but Scout, the horse with the 8-year-old riding for his first time, took off into the woods with the bear chasing them.
Bolster didn’t hesitate: she charged after the bear, screaming. “Nothing in my body was going to let that little boy get hurt by that bear. That wasn’t an option,” she was quoted as saying in “The Spokesman-Review” that is published in Missoula, Mont.
Meanwhile, the Illinois boy had fallen out of the saddle. Bolster said the bear stood its ground several times before she and Tonk ran him off. She praised the big, white Percheron-quarter horse cross for his loyalty to her and for responding the way she asked.
“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. Some horses can never overcome their flight-animal instinct to run away,” she said.
Since their July 30 adventure, she has purchased Tonk, who had been leased for the summer from a Wyoming farm, she explained.
According to her neighbor and former employer, Nancy Troutman, when a forest ranger inspected tracks of the bear he estimated it weighed about 700 pounds.
That’s underweight for a grizzly, Troutman said the ranger explained, and was probably extremely hungry to go after the horse during the trail ride. The ranger speculated the bear might not have been able to hunt for weeks due to an injury.
She graduated from Northside High School when she was 16 and earned a business degree from Radford University.
As a teenager she taught riding at Meadow Wood Stables owned by neighbors Nancy and Danny Troutman in the Bennett Springs area of Roanoke County.
After working as a wrangler in such warm locales as Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, three years ago she moved to northwest Montana, near Glacier National Park.
During the winter she skis. This summer she worked as a wrangler for Swan Mountain Outfitters, leading rides through the national forest.
Bolster said her Montana community newspaper, “Hungry Horse News,” first wrote about her adventure, which has since made the rounds of the Internet, several other newspapers and radio stations.
It all was caught on tape!