Sdickey1960 It also depends on how you are planning on cooking them. I recently did a batch of sticks on the Camp Chef we have and that starts at 160. It was too cold to stay out there and work on propping the lid so I just started them at 160 and then bumped them at 175 when they hit 130 IT. The sticks were nice and full, flavorful and had a really strong snap to them. Now, after leaving them in the cooler overnight I feel like the casings took on more moisture than they would had I done a normal smoke schedule in a vertical. That caused them to have not the best bite but the batch was far from “ruined”.
So batch size matters, 5-10 lb on a pellet grill combo is no issue, much more than that though and a vertical is going to make your life simpler and (IMO) will give you a superior finished product.