My dad and his brothers were brought up on the farm, butchering and processing meats for their dad's meat wagon, including curing and smoking their meats, too - using the cobs left from the shucked corn they grew. They would haul the cobs to the grist mill, getting them crushed and bagged in 100 lb. burlap bags, bringing them back to the farm for smoking their meats all winter long - hams, bacons, turkeys, corned beef/pastrami, beef bacons, ducks, geese, salmon from nearby Pulaski river in upstate NY, and so on. My dad grew up and went to WWII, came home and bought a country store in Adams Center, NY - it's history:
http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/a/fassetts-quality-foods
...and carried on the farm tradition of using crushed corn cobs. But, all things come to an end and so did the grist mills shutting down. No longer could he get just cob, only ensilage - corn and cob mixed which burned hotter and far more volatile to store (spontaneous combustion). To the point it was far too dangerous to use, spelling the demise of the store as they were near retirement and pressured by the state to build new facilities to continue on with their smoking operations.
However, Todd Johnson of SMF, the inventor of the
A-Maze-N smoking tray and tubes, got some corn cob pellets and sent them to me to try and ohhhh what memories they brought back! I located their source at Tractor Supply in the form of horse bedding - here is my writeup on them:
http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/in...about-your-dad-smoking-with-corn-cobs.111151/
http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/index.php?threads/bestcob®-corn-cob-pellets-for-amnps.149282/