Smoker options?

Without knowing what you will be using to transport the smoker(s) or what sanctioning body you will be competing in, it is hard to offer many suggestions. Smokers that will cook an entire comps worth of KCBS food for example would have to be rather large, more expensive than your budget and you'd have to manage your time well unless it was very large. Give us a little more info and we can help more. Somewhere on here there is a spreadsheet with tons of cookers and their weights listed- its awesome.

I started with a Backwoods Fatboy (around $2300, weighs 275 pounds and can go in the back of a small SUV easily) and I had to make sure I had my big meats off in time for the ribs and chicken to go on to the cooker. Humphrey's seem to be a little more bang for your buck than the Backwoods if you want that type of cabinet smoker. For just a little over $2000 you can get a Superior Smoker SS-2 or SS-3 gravity fed cooker and you could cook a comp on those with proper time management.

If I had it to do over, I'd have bought two 22.5 WSM's and a good temp control system and used that for awhile unless you have most of the other equipment that you will need to get started. The expenses add up a lot quicker than you think!

Pit Barrel Cooker you can put it in your trunk less than 300.00 it aint the pit that make good Ba ba QUE it's the Pitmasta. If ya can cook you can whoop a Big Toy boys butt with that trash can. Even the great Kaliforniastan Pitmasta Hairy Sue cleans that tail with a WSM proves the point.

What are you used to smoking on ? You could compete with a WSM and a Kettle.

WSM, UDS, Mini WSM, Kettle are all portable and used to win comps. Harry Soo, in the same contest, walked 4 times using a Mini WSM