WATCH: Family saves bear cub swimming with plastic tub stuck on its head

On Sunday, Brian and Tricia Hurt were out fishing along with their son Brady, when they first saw the bear struggling on Wisconsin's Marsh-Miller Lake.

"We knew that if we didn't do something, we are pretty sure it would not have made it to shore," said Tricia Hurt in an interview CNN. "It was really huffing and puffing, my husband said."

It took the Hurts a few attempts to circle around the distressed bear with their boat. After the first tug of the container Brian noticed that the bear's one ear was loose and after a second attempt at tugging on the container the bear was set free. The whole ordeal was over in about five minutes, Brian said.

The bear eventually swam back to the shore safely.

"We were so excited! We did our good deed for the day. We will never ever do this again, and it felt good to help the poor bear. You don't like to see animals struggle," said Tricia Hurt.

By the time they arrived back onto the shore, word had spread throughout the resort bar of the Hurts good deed, as it was witnessed by other campers from the shoreline.

Some people at the bar notified the Hurts that they too had witnessed the bear themselves a few days earlier with the plastic container on its head, proving that the bear has been struggling for days.

Campers had already contacted the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources several times but department was unable to locate the bear up to that point.

"We weren't going to put the video up," said Hurt said. "But we wanted everyone to know that the bear was OK."

Tricia posted the video to Facebook and received a widely positive response, being viewed now about 800,000 times in Sunday.