Fishing Trip Turns into the Hunt of a Lifetime for Briggsville Lady

Briggsville resident Connie Agnew, who is known as Bucket by all of her friends, is all smiles after she shot this huge bear in August up in Ignace, Ontario, Canada. She is joined by outfitter Jon Rousseau of Rousseau’s Landing. It was Bucket’s first time bear hunting and the bear is believed to weigh well over 600 pounds.

The Crazy Story of Bucket’s Bear

By Travis Houslet
Capital Newspapers

Most people know Connie Agnew by her nickname Bucket. Some of her friends gave her the name because of her ability to fill a bucket full of fish. It might be time to give the Briggsville resident a new nickname, like “Lucky,” or maybe “The Lady Who Shot the Big Bear.”

Back in August, Bucket was able to fulfill a life-long dream when she shot her first bear. This wasn’t just any bear, but a mammoth bruin that tipped the scales at over 600 pounds. An amazing bear with an even more amazing story behind how it ended up coming home with Bucket and her husband Bernie during a late-summer vacation to Ignace, Ontario, Canada.

The Briggsville couple had joined some friends for a couple weeks of walleye fishing in Canada. While the trip was winding down, Bucket and her husband were sitting around with friends enjoying a few cold ones at Rousseau’s Landing, a resort that is owned by their friend Jon Rousseau.

The conversation turned to bear hunting, and Rousseau eventually offered Bernie the opportunity to sit a bait and take a bear. He declined the invite, but Bucket on the other hand, jumped at the opportunity.

“So I piped up and I said, ‘I will,’” Bucket said. “So he looks at me and says, ‘do you hunt?’ And I say, ‘yeah, I hunt all the time.’”

Bucket does indeed hunt all the time, but that would be deer hunting back home in Wisconsin.

“He’s thinking I bear hunt,” Bucket said. “And I’ve never seen a bear in my life.”

Because this was originally a fishing trip, Bucket had no camouflage clothing and no gun to hunt with. Fortunately for Bucket, camo clothing and hunting rifles are not hard to find in Canada. Pretty soon friends had borrowed Bucket everything she would need to go hunting the next day, including a rusty old rifle that Rousseau gave her to use.

The next afternoon, Rousseau took Bucket in to her stand. Trail camera photos of bears hitting the bait in previous weeks had shown a number of small bears in the area, as well as a big bear in the 350 pound range that was visiting the bait site.

Bucket was able to get Rousseau’s attention to have him come back and load the gun for her. Now she was finally ready and Rousseau began his trek out of the woods. Since this was Bucket’s first time bear hunting, she figured Rousseau would be staying nearby to keep tabs on the rookie bear hunter. Thus, she was quite surprised to hear Rousseau’s truck drive off.

“He puts the shell in for me and goes walking away, and I thought OK, he will probably be about 100 yards away from me or so, just in case a bear comes out, in case I get excited and don’t shoot, I could get attacked by this thing,” Bucket said. “All of a sudden I hear a truck door and I turn around and look and this ding-a-ling takes off on me.”

Bucket eventually calmed down and started to enjoy a peaceful sit in the outdoors. She began her sit at about 4 p.m. and four hours later she had still not seen a bear when she began to think it probably wasn’t going to happen for her on this night. Those thoughts quickly went away with the sound of a twig snapping nearby.

“I turn around and look really slowly to my left and I didn’t see anything and all of a sudden here comes this bear out. It was just like on TV, that you could tell it was a big bear because of the way it was walking,” Bucket said.

This bear clearly wasn’t one of the little bears that had been previously photographed on the bait. Bucket thought it even looked bigger than the 350-pounder that was seen in the area, but had no idea just how big the bear actually was.

After about 20 minutes on the bait, the bear turned to leave and presented Bucket with a shot opportunity. Anyone that has ever deer hunted with Bucket knows that she rarely misses. But that was on deer. This was a much different story. Knowing that she may never get this opportunity again, Bucket told herself it was just another deer back home, took a deep breath and took the shot.

After the shot, the bear ran off and Bucket knew she had a good hit on the animal. She was excited as could be, but had been instructed to wait at least 10 minutes before calling for help, so she wouldn’t scare any other bears in the area.

“So I waited and I waited and I thought, ‘oh this is something, 60 years old, I just got my first bear, I’m on cloud 10, I can’t wait to tell somebody,’” Bucket said. “And so I finally called him on my walkie talkie and I said, I need a flipping cigarette.”

Finally Rousseau and Bernie came out to get a very excited Bucket off the stand and begin to take up the bear’s trail. With Rousseau leading the way, it didn’t take long to find Bucket’s first bear, and Rousseau couldn’t believe what he found.

“I seen the flashlight go up in the air and all I saw was this big black glob,” Bucket said. “All he said to me was, ‘women, you got yourself a flipping record.’”

The size of the big bear amazed everyone. It had paws that were 6 1/2 inches wide. Eventually when they tried to weigh the bear on a scale that went to 550 pounds, it maxed out the scale before it could get completely off the bed of the pickup truck. A best guess of how much the bear actually weighed was around 640 pounds.

Another neat twist to the story came after the hunt. The old rusty rifle that Bucket used to shoot the bear actually belonged to Rousseau’s father, who has passed away eight years ago. The gun had sat in its case ever since its owner passed away.

“I said (to Rousseau), I really feel that this all happened for a reason and talking about Jon?” And I started crying and I said, you know what, all I wanted was a bear. Just once in my life to shoot a bear.”

Bucket’s original plan was to get a rug made out of her first bear, but she learned that a rug of a bear this size just won’t do. It had to be a full-body mount.

Once returning home, Bucket and Bernie took the bear to Chris Dischler and Nature’s Own Taxidermy in Spring Green. According to Bucket, Dischler couldn’t believe the size of the bear and had to actually use a grizzly bear mold to mount the bear.

Where the mount of the big bear will actually end up has yet to be determined. Bucket said it could end up someplace like Gander Mountain where everyone can see it, or it could end up in her Briggsville home. But if that is to happen, there will first have to be an addition to the house to make room for it.