Should I remove or save my shagbark hickory?
Shagbark Hickory isn't a habitual problem species, so a sound one is usually worth an opinion before it comes out. Almost nobody plants shagbark — the ones standing in central-Indiana yards are woodlot remnants left when the subdivision went in, and that is precisely why they are in trouble. It is a structurally excellent tree that cannot tolerate having its root zone graded, compacted, or paved, and the resulting decline typically shows up 5 to 15 years after the house was built, not the year after.
How to tell which one you've got
A shagbark that leafs out thin and then wilts entire limbs in midsummer is the pattern that matters: hickory bark beetle working together with Ceratocystis fungus, which moves fast in drought-stressed trees and is not practically treatable once limbs are wilting. Ordinary stress looks different — undersized leaves, scorched margins, early yellow fall color — and those trees usually respond to water and mulch out to the dripline.
The structural question
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.
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