One thing about the picnic cut not mentioned so far, is that the picnic
has a rather large fat cap around most of it. What I found was that
this kinda keeps the smoke from getting into the meat. The fat is great
as a basting agent, so what I did for my last one was to remove that
fat cap, then rub the meat. I sliced the cap into strips and put a few
pieces on top of the meat. After each charge of woodchips, I turned the
meat and added a fresh chunk of fat. What was left of the old stuff was
basically bacon. I use a water pan smoker, and I didn't get any
flareups from dripping grease. The flavor was really incredible.
The downside to it is that it does take longer to cook, much more so if
you can get a whole shoulder or a very large picnic. One time I had to
finish a biggie off in the oven because ( don't shoot me....) I ran out
of charcoal and couldn't keep the heat up in what was left.