First WSM Chicken...

Looks good to me! As far crispy skin is concerned, do you baste with butter or oil?

i think you are going to need to cook at a higher temp to get the crispy skin. crank to 350* or 375* and give it a shot. that chicken looks good though! the wsm all clean lookin' and all kinda brought a tear to my eye!

+1 for a higher cook temp.

Oil or butter on the skin helps too.

I oil the skin and cook around 350-375 till I hit the proper internal temps. As for the fall of the bone tenderness?... I have yet to cook a chicken/turkey that didn't have the meat fall effortlessly from the bone. Try the higher temps and see what that gets you.

Isn't CRISPY chicken skin the result of a VERY hot cook? as in grilled or rotisserie?

My BEST wsm smoked chicken yet (just the other day) was cooked at about 240* and I finally got tender "bite through" chicken skin, not rubbery, not tough. I think it was all in my prep, but since the results were SO much better than my dry pan HH cooks, I think I'll just use my wsm for low-n-slow in the future. Call me old school, even water in the pan, but when my brother-in-law told me sauce would've been an insult to this chicken, I think I finally got it right. :-D Brine (I dry-brine) , air dry in the fridge, REMOVE some fat and ADD some fat. :becky: (as in butter)

If the leg quarters on sale look good to me, you can bet what I'll be smoking. Two dozen fit nicely on my three rack set-up in my 18.5" wsm.

I'm the idiot who has to ask- Could you take the pan out and lid off and crisp at the end? Turn the smoker into a grill (It is a Weber, after all)? It would be like Rendevous (SP) in Memphis. To me, I'd crisp at the end. Internal good, hit the skin quick with heat. I saw someone talking about a torch in another thread. Maybe a Bernzomatic would scratch that itch.

Yeah, you can if you want to. I've just not had good results "crisping" the skin at the end. Personally, I like my grilled chicken to taste grilled and my smoked chicken to taste smoked. I'm after a bite-through TENDER skin for my smoked chicken and thank God I've finally figured it out....and I didn't have to take all the skin off and scrape all the fat off.:-D Yeah, I pulled off the big gobs that were easy, but not nearly all of it, and it didn't take long at all. My brother-n-law asked why I was putting butter under the skin when leg quarters already had so much fat, but he was the first one to hit the leftover chicken bag the next day...for breakfast.

That's a great looking bird! :thumb:
I like the wheels on the WSM too!