COBURN GORE – A 54-year-old man was injured Sunday after he cut a telephone line to free a moose.

Peter Sewall, who manages sporting camps for the Megantic Fish and Game Club, was checking camp property off Route 27 when he and another man saw a moose tangled in a phone wire.

Sewall was identified as the victim by Sheila Lecander of Eustis, who said Wednesday night that she had heard about the incident from others in town.

The two men got about 40 feet from the approximately 1,000-pound animal and thought if they cut the remote camp’s phone system line the moose would take off, said Jay Wyman, a representative of Sugarloaf Ambulance/Rescue Service who was in Eustis at a camp when the emergency call came in.

The camps can only be reached by boat and visitors use the phone at the dock to call the camp to announce their arrival.

Once the men cut the line, they started running away from the moose, Wyman said. But the moose ran right toward them and trampled one of them.

Sewall received injuries to the left side of his back. He had a laceration and a “fairly” large bruise on his back and a “good size” welt on the left side of his head and a few scratches.

The other man helped him walk a quarter-mile to a pickup truck and then drove the truck to Pepin’s General Store and reported the incident from there.

A store clerk, who has some nurse’s training, got some blankets to put over the injured man and cared for him while waiting for emergency responders to arrive.

Wyman, an emergency medical technician, said he responded in his private vehicle.

“It’s quite ride up there,” Wyman said.

The road is under construction, he said, but he still was able to arrive in about 25 minutes. The ambulance arrived later.

“We treated him on the scene… and got him stabilized,” Wyman said.

A medical helicopter was called in, Wyman said, because there was no way of knowing if the man had received internal injuries.

With the road under construction and the Farmington hospital a good 90 minutes away, it was the best thing to do for the patient, Wyman said.

Border Patrol and emergency responders blocked off Route 27 to allow the helicopter to land. Sewall was taken to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston and admitted, according to Wyman.

A nursing supervisor could not confirm Wednesday night that Sewall was at the hospital.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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