Originally posted by Tangoblue:

I never could do the pickaxe on Golems. Because, well, I suck at it. I've used the iron mace with parry.

That's the actually perfect way of dealing with them, because

1) you want to save all of your pick durability for the actual mining
2) it's much better for you to have a mace and shield in your hand in the event a wolf or some other critter jumps at you from behind the staggered or destroyed golem