I've seen a few of these lately. Hickory backed with boo or sinew. I'm ignorant, so I'm not saying that this is a bad choice, but from what little I know it appears to be. Sinew and bood have the greatest tensile strength. Of the North American woods, so does hickory, which is why it is also used as a backing on lams. I have not heard that hickory has great compressive strength, but that it performs better in low moisture, presumably to resist set, indicative of no so great, if not necessarily so bad, compressive strength.
Assuming you have a choice of woods, why use hickory on a belly?