How long to smoke chicken, turkey and duck, whole or in pieces, with the pit temperatures that keep the skin from going rubbery.
Google's AI Overview gives chicken leg quarters two different pull temperatures without saying which chamber setting gets you which one. Z Grills times the same cut by checking "the thickest part of a thigh" and never mentions the drumstick at all.
Updated Sep 2026
Traeger's competition recipe pulls chicken drumsticks at 190°F. Grillseeker pulls the same cut at 165°F, then keeps it on the grill anyway. Past a certain point, the smoker stops cooking the meat and starts cooking the skin instead.
Updated Sep 2026
Every recipe and the AI Overview agree on roughly the same window for a cornish hen, which almost never happens on this site. The reason is size: this is the one whole bird small enough that the breast-thigh gap every bigger bird here needs a trick to manage barely has time to open.
Updated Sep 2026
Traeger's own recipe pulls turkey legs at 165°F after four to five hours on the smoker. Hey Grill Hey pulls the same cut in about ninety minutes. Neither recipe is wrong. They are answering different questions, and this site already knows why dark meat runs two clocks at once.
Updated Sep 2026
A duck carries a subcutaneous fat cap that chicken and turkey do not, which changes the timing rules. Whole duck, duck breast, and the render-then-crisp method, broken down by weight and cut.
Updated Sep 2026
The AI Overview gives a flat rate of 15 to 30 minutes per pound, worked out for a 12-pound bird. Search a little further and the same engine gets asked whether a 20-pound turkey is too big to smoke, a question a flat rate should have already answered.
Updated Sep 2026
Every guide agrees on a rough time range for a spatchcocked bird. None of them mention which end of the grate it is sitting on, and on an offset, that decision changes which piece finishes first.
Updated Sep 2026
Google's answer box gives 30 minutes to 3 hours for the same cut at similar chamber temperatures. Most of that spread has nothing to do with the recipe and everything to do with which chicken breast actually ended up on the grate.
Updated Sep 2026
The AI Overview says wings need 175 to 180°F instead of the standard 165°F floor to melt fat and connective tissue. That is a claim about meat. On a cut this small, the problem it is actually describing is skin.
Updated Oct 2026
The AI Overview gives 30 to 45 minutes per pound, then a weight table two lines down whose own numbers fall under that rate. The math is explainable. The more useful fact is that turkey breast, unlike most cuts on this site, has nothing to gain from running past the safety floor.
Updated Sep 2026