Holed 1894 Large Cent - What Kind Of Hole?

My local shop has a 25-cent crap bin for Commonwealth coins - usually it's full of recent coinage, but sometimes there'll be a couple old British [half] pennies or even an ungradeable large cent. I picked up a few cent-type coins, including a severely pitted 1918 cent and this: an 1894 (small 4) with a hole right between the O and N in ONE. I just wanted to know - what made this hole? It's not a clean jewelery-type hole at all, it looks like a little bullet hole or something.

I have two theories:
1. Some yahoo was using it as a target for a shotgun and one of the pellets went through the copper (unfortunately I'm not very knowledgeable about guns so this is probably bunk).
2. I read somewhere that due to their 1-inch diameter, large cents were nailed to barns as a quick measurement reference, so maybe it's a really messy nail hole.

Here are pics:



Anyone have any idea what caused this?

I'd also like to thank whoever holed this, because otherwise I never would have been able to get a Victoria large cent for under $1.

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