Smoking wild turkey(good or bad idea)

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BC Buck

Meat Mopper
Original poster
Dec 16, 2018
243
87
MO
Tired of frying breast and soup with rest of bird. Have a Jake I split encase this does not work. The plan is wet brine over night then inject with melted seasoned butter. Then season bird and put on Memphis. Smoke with hickory, cherry at 200 for one hour then kick temp to 325 to crisp skin till internal temp 160 about one hour. Not sure if 325 is a good idea because where bird is split will be skinless. Anyone have experience with wild birds?
 
Haven't tried one for many years.
However IMHO, Chuck everything but the Breast.
Then Brine the Breast, and do your best on it.
Drums are skinny & mostly slivers of flexible bone like material.
I'm sure others will claim to disagree.

Bear
 
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Tired of frying breast and soup with rest of bird. Have a Jake I split encase this does not work. The plan is wet brine over night then inject with melted seasoned butter. Then season bird and put on Memphis. Smoke with hickory, cherry at 200 for one hour then kick temp to 325 to crisp skin till internal temp 160 about one hour. Not sure if 325 is a good idea because where bird is split will be skinless. Anyone have experience with wild birds?

That sounds like a pretty good start to your plan! I wish I had experience with wild birds but I never get to hunt them or when I see them they are out of season.

If you brine and inject with butter I don't think you'll have an issue with the areas that aren't covered by the skin. I smoked turkey parts as well as chickens (skin removed from the breast sometimes) and chicken parts that are brined and not injected at straight 325F all the time. The uncovered parts are fine.

I would caution to keep an eye on the amount of salt content you are adding. If you are doing a brine (has salt), should you inject using salted butter, then you rub the bird with more salt, and finally finish with a sauce that may have salt, I think you may get salt overload.

Keep an eye on the salt and I think your 200F to 325F would be fine. Heck you may want to do 190F rather than 200F to begin with since birds cook up so quickly. I've had to do that with poultry and smoked pork loin chops just to get enough smoke on them before they finish... they cook up quicker than you think even at low temps!
 
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That sounds like a pretty good start to your plan! I wish I had experience with wild birds but I never get to hunt them or when I see them they are out of season.

If you brine and inject with butter I don't think you'll have an issue with the areas that aren't covered by the skin. I smoked turkey parts as well as chickens (skin removed from the breast sometimes) and chicken parts that are brined and not injected at straight 325F all the time. The uncovered parts are fine.

I would caution to keep an eye on the amount of salt content you are adding. If you are doing a brine (has salt), should you inject using salted butter, then you rub the bird with more salt, and finally finish with a sauce that may have salt, I think you may get salt overload.

Keep an eye on the salt and I think your 200F to 325F would be fine. Heck you may want to do 190F rather than 200F to begin with since birds cook up so quickly. I've had to do that with poultry and smoked pork loin chops just to get enough smoke on them before they finish... they cook up quicker than you think even at low temps!
Will watch salt content and set smoker the lowest it will go (think 180) for first hour.
 
When you figure it out, come to my place and help me out:

Wild Turkeys.jpg
 
I did a bunch of wild leg quarters for a guy a while back as a favor. I couldn't agree more bear. So much waste material to dig through.

He seemed to like it, but I wasn't sold. I would've ground what little meat was on those pieces up into sausage personally
 
After I fried my first plucked whole wild bird injected with (a lot of) butter in which I sautéed garlic and herbs de Provence, I have never gone back. It makes something a guy actually wants to eat rather than a chore that comes as a responsibility of killing an animal.
 
Tired of frying breast and soup with rest of bird. Have a Jake I split encase this does not work. The plan is wet brine over night then inject with melted seasoned butter. Then season bird and put on Memphis. Smoke with hickory, cherry at 200 for one hour then kick temp to 325 to crisp skin till internal temp 160 about one hour. Not sure if 325 is a good idea because where bird is split will be skinless. Anyone have experience with wild birds?
I have a couple breast on now after washing the brine coated the non skin area with olive oil and extra rub to hopefully get that crispness your talking about
 
After I fried my first plucked whole wild bird injected with (a lot of) butter in which I sautéed garlic and herbs de Provence, I have never gone back. It makes something a guy actually wants to eat rather than a chore that comes as a responsibility of killing an animal.
Yes absolutely the sauteed garlic butter is great for maintaining moisture. Have also tried insisting brine the night before but have to milk out and replace or your over salted
 
I have a couple breast on now after washing the brine coated the non skin area with olive oil and extra rub to hopefully get that crispness your talking about
What temp and let us know how it comes out. Im cooking the bird tomorrow.
 
We've got an Indian grocery store close by, and they have ghee for about the same price per unit volume (it comes in a big jar) as butter is at the local Meijers. It's already clarified and doesn't have too much salt in it. It also has that sort of fermented tang that Irish butter does, so I just use that for making injections.
 
We've got an Indian grocery store close by, and they have ghee for about the same price per unit volume (it comes in a big jar) as butter is at the local Meijers. It's already clarified and doesn't have too much salt in it. It also has that sort of fermented tang that Irish butter does, so I just use that for making injections.
Hard to beat the use of seasoned butters for injections.
 
What temp and let us know how it comes out. Im cooking the bird tomorrow.
Its was all on an offset ran between 220 and 260 started with hickory, last 2/3 with Cherry. The garlic butter injection kept it moist. Best I've done zero game. Giving my wife allot of credit for the spicy, kerk style rub- garlic salt, onion powder, smoked paprika, cayane pepper, dash if chilli powder brown sugar, the liquid was dole pinnaple/ orange juice.
 
The last wild or free range turkey that I partook in was like eating a radial tire tender loin or at least a tire boot.

The breast turned out as good as a Butterball. The dark meat never reached the magic temp of 180 buy the time breast reached 160. Dark meat had good flavor and was juicy but reminded me of that radial tire you where talking about. Skin looked good but was a ruberband and would have made a good bow string.
 
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