shelling hickories and going nuts!

This year, it looks like we're going to get a bunch o' nuts. English Walnut and quite a bunch from an old Shagbark Hickory. This year looks like the best year ever. A cold spring and a hot summer seemed to have done the trick. Anyway was curious if there's an easy way to harvest wild hickories once they're ripe. We've used a hammer and those little nut picks but it takes forever. Any suggestions appreciated. -Green Ox

PS. Our hickory might have been the state champion (biggest) at one point. It was buried eight feet by the builders of our house and survived that craziness. It was here before the colonists and the farms. It's believed that this tree was first harvested by the native Americans--the Schagticokes, who've been in the news recently. We believe it's over 450 years old which is an old tree by CT standards. Apparently, the Native people had a practice of burning out and around the trees that bore edibles. This made a clearing for when the nuts started to fall and it allowed the trees to grow big without competition. The colonists let it alone because they could use the nuts in winter too.

Green Ox, here's a few nut crackers:
http://www.redhillgeneralstore.com/nutcracker.htm?source=goadd

I have the pecan nut crackewr from them. It's adjustable for pecan size and works well.

greenox,

Very interesting history, any chance you can post a picture of that tree?

Now, that would be interesting to see! ~ Suzi :)

Greenox,
I'm late getting in on this discussion, but you might still have a few bags of nuts put away waiting to be cracked.
A good, thin-shelled shagbark can be cracked, with a little more effort than a pecan, with one of the lightweight pecan crackers, like the Duke's pecan cracker at the page Darius linked - that's what I use to crack all my good shagbarks; if the shell is too thick to crack with my little Reed's Rocket(identical to the Duke), I'm not likely to spend the time & effort to crack them. Thicker shelled shagbarks or shellbarks, which typically have a much thicker shell - but bigger kernel - will require a heavy-duty nutcracker, like the ones designed for black walnuts.
Soaking your hickory nuts(or black walnuts, for that matter) in a pan of warm water for an hour or two prior to a session of cracking will help immensely - soaking allows the nutshell to bend, buckle and split, rather than flying to pieces when you reach 'critical pressure'; as a result, you'll get many more intact halves/quarters, instead of nutmeat fragments. On nuts that require soaking to get good cracking, I usually crack the nuts, then spread them out to dry for a day or so before picking out the nutmeats.

If you'd care to try it, you can also make 'hickory syrup' by saving all your nutshell pieces/fragments, boiling them for a few hours, straining out the nutshells, then adding sugar and cooking down 'til you get the consistency/thickness you desire
Some hickory syrup whipped into softened butter makes a nice spread for toast, rolls, waffles, etc.

You are very lucky to have Hickorys. I remember my Mom tediously cracking them so she could have hickory pie. Most of the trees growing in the ''bottoms'' flooded out and died around here.