Home » Latest » Outdoors » Family rescue bear found swimming with a plastic jar on its head

Family rescue bear found swimming with a plastic jar on its head

4

InfoSearched 79 0 Outdoors

8.7

SaveSavedRemoved 5

A Wisconsin fishing trip turned into an accidental wildlife rescue caught entirely on camera.

On Saturday, June 27, 2020, Tricia Hurt, her husband Brian, and their son Brady were out fishing on Marsh-Miller Lake in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, when they noticed something struggling in the open water ahead of their boat. It was a young black bear, paddling frantically with a clear plastic container jammed over its head. What started as a routine day on the lake became a scramble to save the animal before it drowned or panicked itself into deeper trouble.

• The bear had a clear plastic food tub or cheese-ball jug stuck over its head, blocking its vision and making it hard to breathe while swimming.
• Brian Hurt’s first attempt to grab the container failed when it slipped from his grasp as the bear pulled away.
• On a second pass, Brian reached the rim of the jug, pulled it free, and the bear swam safely to shore.

The Moment on the Water

The Hurts were fishing when Tricia spotted the bear thrashing near the boat, clearly disoriented by the plastic container trapped around its head. Brian took the wheel and eased the boat alongside the swimming animal while Tricia pulled out her phone to film. The bear kept moving, unable to see where it was going, and the family had only seconds to react each time they got close.

Brian’s first lunge for the jug came up empty. The bear pulled away and the container stayed put, forcing the family to circle back for another shot. It’s the kind of moment that could have gone wrong fast — a spooked wild animal thrashing next to an aluminum boat is not a controlled situation — but the Hurts kept their composure and lined up a second approach.

The Second Pass

On the return pass, Brian got the boat close enough to reach over the side, grip the rim of the container firmly, and pull it clean off the bear’s head in one motion. Freed from the plastic, the bear paused in the water to reorient itself before turning and swimming toward the shoreline, disappearing into the woods without incident.

Never dreamt we would ever do this in our lifetime… He made it to shore after all that.

That’s how Tricia Hurt described it when she posted the footage to Facebook on June 28, 2020. The line captures exactly what makes the clip resonate — an ordinary family fishing trip, an animal in real trouble, and a split-second decision to help that nobody planned for.

Viral Video Distribution Dynamics

Once Tricia’s Facebook post went up, the footage moved fast. National news outlets picked up the clip within days, drawn to the same details that make any good wildlife-encounter video travel — a clear beginning, middle, and end, a visible obstacle, and a clean resolution with the animal swimming free. It’s the same reason clips of unexpected animal encounters, like The Most Extreme Wild Animals Battles!, tend to find an audience far outside the region where they happened.

The rescue also fits into a familiar pattern of stray plastic packaging becoming a hazard for wildlife near lakes and waterways, a theme that shows up again and again in outdoor and nature footage, including pieces like Here’s What a Lion Does After Being Banished From the Pride, where an animal’s survival hinges on factors well outside its control.

There was no game warden, no tranquilizer gun, no multi-hour operation — just a family with a boat, a phone camera, and enough nerve to get close twice. The bear swam off toward the tree line on Marsh-Miller Lake, and as far as the Hurts’ footage shows, that was the last anyone saw of it.