A Voronezh farmer, attacked by a moose, said: "If the ambulance had arrived half an hour later, I wouldn't be here."

A resident of the Voronezh region, who became a victim of a moose attack, shared his experience.

The incident occurred in the fall of 2024, when the victim sustained such severe injuries that he required the assistance of doctors from four different hospitals.

The 50-year-old farmer was heading to a pasture in one of the villages in the Voronezh region in October to deliver supplies to a shepherd. He noticed a moose in the distance at the edge of the forest. Initially, he thought nothing of it, as cows were regularly grazed in the pasture, and no one expected a wild animal to approach the area. However, the moose quickly closed the distance. It weighed an impressive 500 kg. Ultimately, the aggressive moose attacked the farmer and severely injured him: an ambulance took the patient away with an open traumatic brain injury.

- It's unclear what the animal found unsettling: was it me or the vehicle? It struck both me and the car with full force. The vehicle is still left mangled. Thankfully, some passersby noticed the attack and rushed to my aid. The shepherd tried to redirect the moose by herding the cows towards it, but that didn’t help, - the man recalls. - It was terrifying; no one expected such a thing: there are many wild animals in the forest, but people often go mushroom picking, and such incidents are rare. Everything happened so fast that no one understood what provoked the beast. Everything was covered in blood, and I had lacerations. If the ambulance had arrived half an hour later, I might not be here now.

Photo by VOKB No. 1

The man was saved through the efforts of specialists from four hospitals. Initially, he was transported to the Ternovskaya hospital and then to the Borisoglebsk district hospital, where doctors discovered multiple skull fractures, air accumulation in the cavity, and displacement of midline structures on a CT scan. This dangerous condition could have led to the patient's death, as he was in a coma. He was urgently transferred to Voronezh Regional Hospital No. 1, where he was put on a ventilator due to increasing brain swelling from a depressed skull fracture. Neurosurgeons performed surgery to address the fracture's consequences, and anesthesiologists managed to stabilize the patient’s condition.

- My chances of returning to life were not very high. The doctors basically pieced me back together! Now my coordination has already recovered. Thank you all for pulling me back from another world! - the victim expressed his gratitude to the doctors.