I've never seen a hickory nut. By googling, they reminded me of how we dealt with hazelnuts.
As a child I used to help my mother going out into the woods and picked 100s of lbs of hazelnuts. They had green fuzzy hulls.
We spread them on a paved section in the yard to let them dry out under the sun. Once the hulls turn brown and shrank, we used a long stick (twice as thick as a handle of a shovel, and longer) to pound them. The nuts will fall out of the hulls that way. Much quicker than peel them individually.
This is also how we deshell dry beans, with a lighter treatment.
Just an idea, it may or may not be suitable for your harvest. And good luck!
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