I tried this recipe for New Year's Eve dinner, since it looked so simple and I love duck. I had a MapleLeaf Farms whole duck, thawed, about 4 1/2 lbs trimmed of some fat (not much trimming needed). I followed RangerDF's instructions, using 2 oz of cherry (three very small chunks) in my Amerique. I placed a foil pan on the rack below the duck to catch the drippings. I turned the duck over and pricked the skin every hour as RangerDF specified, and used 300 degrees. The weather was quite cold, so I lost some heat each time I opened the door, down to 230 or so, but it rebounded within 10 minutes. I crisped the skin in a 425 degree oven for 10 minutes after a 15 minute rest out of the smoker.
Unfortunately, the duck was quite dry, even though there was still fat being rendered at the end of the six hours. Plus, the skin was almost too smokey to eat, although the meat was very tasty. All in all, disappointing. I think too long a time at too high a temp were the culprits. It is obvious that the meat was "done" in terms of temp long before most of the fat was rendered out. I will definitely do this again, but will pick a day when it is a little warmer and easier to keep tabs on things.