A Russian man was devoured by a brown bear while gathering mushrooms outside his village, hours after jokingly warning his wife about the fatal scenario.

Alexander Korneyev, 66, was killed just outside Suluk village, 5,300 miles east of Moscow, as he tried to put up a desperate fight against the animal with his penknife.

Korneyev's mauled body was found by local railway workers on a dirt track near the village, Daily Mail UK reported.

Villagers, who later tracked and killed the bear, found Korneyev’s flesh inside the animal’s stomach.

Before leaving for the woods, the former railway construction worker had called his wife, who was staying at the couple's other home in a nearby town, and joked about the possibility of getting eaten by a bear.

“I'm going to pick mushrooms. If I don't call you again by 10 a.m., it means I've been eaten by a bear,” he was quoted as having told his wife.

“It was a joke but he evoked evil with his words,” head of the local village council Sergey Ryabov said.

“There was blood everywhere. His penknife was broken in half, and there were signs of a fight. His body was lying face down. There was no single untouched spot,” Ryabov said.

According to the Daily Mail, locals were left stunned by the “brutality of the attack in an area where bears 'have never attacked humans' in living memory.”

Ryabov said Korneyev loved picking mushrooms and had a favorite spot “just a short distance from the village.”

Bears have been spotted close to towns and villages across Siberia and the far east of Russia in recent weeks due to raging wildfires, and a shortage of natural food.

Police have now posted signs warning people not to venture into the woods or pick mushroom after local residents reported to have seen several bears prowling near the village.

According to Siberian Times, “millions of Russians” collect mushrooms from forests around this time of the year.

In 2017, another mushroom gatherer, Alexander Lopukhin, narrowly escaped death after he was attacked by a bear in the Ural Federal District of Russia.