forepaw was a deep, fresh laceration through the pad—possibly sustained when the tiger destroyed the outhouse. Far worse, though, was the wound to his other leg. A small handful of pea-sized buckshot had raked his right paw and foreleg, separating it at the cubital joint (the equivalent of our elbow). The only way buckshot could be so tightly concentrated is for it to have been shot from point-blank range. A factory load shot from that distance would have shattered the tiger’s leg and crippled him fatally, but Markov’s homemade shell, possibly compromised by condensation, didn’t have the same
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