I have some 6-7 year old fig plants which pretty much died back to the ground this winter.  I see lots of shoots coming up from the ground and know that I have a good and likely undamaged root system.  I have not pruned back the dead growth at the top as when I cut into the wood, while not green, it does not look positively dead either so I decided to wait and see if new buds would appear on some of the older wood and then to prune back the rest. Now I am starting to see the major trunks at the bottom starting to get vertical splits about 3"-4" in length and oozing small amounts of sap. I am not sure as to what I should do at this point.  So far no signs of insect damage but the sweet sap has to be an open invitation to ants, bees and every other pest and disease in the neighborhood. Suggestions please? We are discussing celeste and brunswick/magnolia which are pretty old hardy varieties. My smaller trees which were totally buried came through the winter without damage but these bushes were too large to bury.

I'd cut off all that damaged wood while you still have room. The longer you wait the more the new growth will be in the way. On mine the damaged wood never sprouts shoots so might as well be gone.

I had many to die this winter and three that split as you described. I cut the dead wood off as low as possible.

I then gave them a nice drink of liquid sea kelp and Big Bloom.

Cut off all dead wood. I would not fertilize. My experience is that with no root mass damage, it is much active feeding & actively pushing new growth, the new wood from ground will take off so crazily with stretchy nodes. I find stretchy nodes does not harden as well as nodes that are closer.

The way I have learned to tell if it is really dead is to pour water on the wood, if while wet it looks deep green, it will probably still send out shoots. If it stays brown, even when wet, it is dead.

I used this on my 3 inground trees this year and it seems to be accurate. Two of my 3 yr olds died to the ground, even though they were wrapped in a cage of leaves. Only my Hardy Chicago has life more than 2-3 inches above ground. The whole HC looked "greenish" so probably alive, but I still pruned it back to 24 inches for other reasons.

To test my theory I buried the HC top cuttings in a pot, under 1 inch of soil and guess what? Those slightly "greenish" cuttings are already putting out a shoot! So the "greenish" verses brown distinction seems to be a solid indicator, at least on the varieties I have.

Gene that seems to work as an idicator for me as well, then when I see other trees with swelling buds I slowly cut back at the shoots until i see sap running, then maybe cut back another inch or so.  The only problem with doing the cutting back if the buds have no broken is that the cut may dry up too much and crack which has happened to me this year on several trees.

Marianna, scratch the eye parts (where the new sprouting would appear usually) on the dead branches, see if there is still green under dark flakes of the potentially sprouting part, you'll know if the entire branch is dead when you scratch and see nothing green underneath.