I’ve thought of bagging some wild turkeys. I live in suburbia and the last few years Turkeys always seem to plentiful in the weeks before Thanksgiving. As a matter of fact a pair of them were walking on my lawn this morning.

I guess there appearance and timing are not coincidental. They probably were chosen for this seasonal meal because they were so available.

I smoke a turkey every year (at least the past 3 or 4) in NJ. We do a big get-together at the in-laws, and the logistics of providing enough turkey from the oven got to be too complicated. (generally about 30-35 people for dinner, and 45-50 lbs of turkey).
I get up about 5:30am, throw a 25 lb bird on the electric smoker I bought them and go back to bed. A couple hours later, I get some coffee and check on things. Sometime around 2:00 or 3:00 pm we carve the roasted and smoked birds.

Couldn’t be any easier, and I get major bonus points for what basically amounts to checking on the water level a couple times during the day. :))

The only sad part is that I don’t think the smoker gets used more than once a year at their place.

If I want to cook like a man I hit up Cooking for Engineers. They have a long description with pictures but you can skip to the bottom of the recipe and there’s a nice flow diagram.

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/74/Classic-Roast-Turkey

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Must have had the whiskey beer can turkey.

Smoking in general is not a set and forget way to cook. You should be checking your smoker every hour or so if for no other reason just to be safe, after all there is fire involved. Smoking a 14 pound turkey takes me around 8 or 9 hours. My best suggestion is to brine it for at least 12 hours in a very salty brine and then don’t place the turkey on the rack but instead suspend it from the smoker, this way smoke will enter the cavity and it will cook from the inside as well. When smoking a turkey (or any larger meat that will take more than 4 hours) I would also recommend an electric smoker. They are much easier to control the heat on. Chances are that if your turkey came out black it was from having too much heat not from being in for too long, although 12 hours is too long, normally an over smoked piece of meat will just be dry not burnt. Lastly try wood shavings as oppose to wood chips, you might have to add more during the cooking process but I always have better results.