Is my shagbark hickory safe in a storm?
Among the most ice-resistant species in the standard urban susceptibility tables, alongside the other hickories, and it holds loads that shear black cherry and cottonwood outright. Its wind and ice failures are almost always confined to limbs already killed by bark beetles or hollowed by decay behind old topping cuts, not to sound wood.
What pruning can and can't prevent
Dormant season only, and keep the cuts small — hickory compartmentalizes slowly, so a 10-inch cut on a mature shagbark is an open decay column for a decade. The trap is deadwooding: hickory deadwood is dense and brittle and snaps without warning under a climber's weight, so it is rope-and-lower work rather than anything to be free-dropped or stood on.
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