Welcome to the forum Ragnar. I agree with sugar maple and pignut hickory. Next spring, try to remember to look for the pignut hickory as they really look neat in the spring, espeically the young ones.
Had my son down to help with a bit of splitting this past weekend. He is in pretty good shape and used to split a lot of wood for me when he was still at home. I had him tie into a piece of shagbark hickory with a maul and it was funny watching that maul bounce off the hickory like he was trying to split a tractor tire. The Speeco had no troubles with it. I really need that kind of help seeing I am sneaking up on 70.
Ya, da Pignut usually has 5 leaflets... Well, I think it's because pigs eat the nuts, but could also be because when a limb snaps back, you'll wish it had hit a pig's nuts instead of yours!
Sugar Maple and Pignut Hickory, or maybe another hickory that would be so similar you won't care about the difference. There are about four or five hickories that aren't Shagbark that look similar to eachother. The wood is very similar to Shagbark, and I think when they are made into lumber they are sold together with Shagbark. Butternut would have more leaflets, and they'd all be similar in size (whereas with this tree the leaflets aren't all the same size).
