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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8123555" data-attributes="member: 177">A few things:1) Brine your bird (obvious, but important).1a) Consider layering the breast with bacon.  A turkey is not a pork butt - it doesn't have the fat or connective tissue content, and so may need the basting.2) A turkey is probably the largest thing you'll ever put in a home smoker, and it is also about the most spherical.  This means it has the worst surface area to volume ratio you are apt to ever work with, and will have a longer cooking time than you expect.3) By all that is holy, make sure that bird is fully defrosted before smoking it.  Turkeys are large enough to fool you, by feeling defrosted on the outside, but having an icy core.  Roasting in an oven, this is bad enough, but it is worse in a smoker.  If you want that core cooked, the time is stretched forever, and the outside of the bird will be seriously overdone before the middle of the breast is safe to eat.4) I am sure you know this, but this goes especially for a smoker - pop-up thermometers you get in some birds don't mean squat.Beyond that, there are things he did that seemed different from modern smoking techniques, but I expect that was due to the nature of the smoker, which was home-built, rather than commercially purchased.  It burned wood faster than most modern smokers, for example.</blockquote>