Hi all. First post, and I appreciate all the tips & wisdom I've gathered here the last few weeks.

I am refinishing a ~100 year-old built-in oak cabinet. I would like to conceal old nail holes with tapered face grain oak plugs that I got at Woodcraft. In my first test, I used a forstner bit to prepare the nail hole for the 3/8" plug. After hammering in in the plug, without any glue, I sanded it flush. Then, when I stained the plug to match the piece, I ended up with a dark ring around the plug.

Does anyone have any tips on how to minimize this ring? Perhaps I didn't hammer in the plug enough? Like I mentioned, no glue was used, so it isn't the stain reacting differently to glue. Any thoughts would be appreciated!