Your fire cooks the meat. You have to learn to operate your pit and control the fire to produce smoked meat. Hence the phase Pit Master.
Once you season the meat that is all you can do to the meat. Throw it on the pit and manage your fire to produce the heat and smoke needed. Remember looking ain't cooking.
A well designed smoker, depending on just what techniques you are using is heplful. But not the key. Some of the best meat I ever did was on a basic barrel.
Skill is much more important. And you only get that by doing it. Sometimes wrong. Don't over think it. There is nothing to but do it.
But watch birds. Cooked too long at too low a temp can cause them too spoil. Food poison from a bird is no fun at all.