Can there's a big broken branch hung up in my tree be fixed without removing the tree?
The tree usually; the branch never. The hanger comes out, the break gets cut back to a proper point on the parent limb or trunk, and a healthy tree carries on without it. The answer changes where the failure tore a strip of bark and wood down the trunk on its way out, or where the limb that failed was one half of a codominant pair — that leaves a large open wound and a tree with different structure than it had, and the rest of the crown should be assessed at the same visit for the identical defect that just failed. The tree does not need the branch back; it needs a clean cut and an honest look at what else is up there.
How long you have to decide
Assume it can fall within the hour and behave accordingly — that is the correct posture, and this is one of the few items on this list where a same-day call is genuinely justified rather than upsold. The variable is not time, it is what sits underneath. Over a driveway, a walkway, a deck, a play set, a parked car, or anywhere people or pets pass, this is a stop-what-you-are-doing item. Over open ground at the back of a lot that nobody crosses, it is a few days. Rope off the area under it and well beyond it, because a falling limb glances off lower branches and does not land straight down. Do not try to pull it free with a rope from below, do not throw things at it, and do not put a ladder into that tree.
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