The hay idea is a good one, as there is plenty of haying around here. There were plenty of these made of round stock there, in addition to flat stock. Some had a mass produced look to them, and there were some that seemed identical and some that were different in minor ways, so I think it must be (or must have been) a somewhat common item made by multiple manufacturers.
Here's an example of what I see when I google "grappling hay hook" (not necessarily in that order):
This is an antique hay fork for use in a barn to pickup large amounts of hay from a wagon and hoist it to the loft of the barn. This would have been attached to a hay fork carrier that moved on a meta
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The things I'm finding online seem to share the size and construction of what I bought. All are obviously for taking a big grab of something not very dense, such as hay. The online examples also have that little ring, apparently to open a grappling assembly.
However, my shape isn't right for this. The online ones are curved on a radius around the eye, so they'd travel cleanly into the hay as they pivot about the eye. Mine is curved around a point far from the eye, and if you wanted it to cleanly penetrate, you'd have to swing the eye backwards.
There's also plenty of tobacco grown around here, and it would be a light bulky product. Could this be for tobacco?
The best bet so far seems to be what I found here, which they're calling an "antique scaffolding hook", and I've found a few other references to that. However, they often put a question mark on it, so apparently not sure.
2 Sky hooks at your service. 24 x 29 overall...antique industrial hook? scaffold hook? They are 20 lbs each and almost look like they were pounded out of two very large pry bars, they almost look ha
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