When I am smoking a hog, I make a marinating brine of salt, pepper, garlic powder, chili powder, spicy mustard, brown sugar, lemmon, Coke/DP, pickled jalepenos with juice and soy sauce, or whatever I have or looks good in the fridge at the time. Ratios don't need to be exact but I try to keep a quarter cup of salt and sugar to each gallon of everything else. If you add more salt than that you have more of a curing brine and the finished product can get a bit salty. I make about two gallons at a time usually. I put it all in a pot and bring it to a boil and then turn it off to cool. Once it is room temp I add the meat, depending on what size and shape the meat is I might put it in a large pot and stick it in the fridge or in a cooler and cover with ice. Either way I let it sit for a day, sometime for several.
Once I am ready to cook the meat I rub it down with spices then I either braise it in foil or smoke it bare. Depends on my mood, the size/thickness of meat, etc. For meat that tends to be dry and tough already like a hog leg, I usually braise it. To braise it wrap it fairly loosely in foil and pour in a few cups of the brine/water/wine/beer/etc and then seal it well. Toss it in the smoker (or oven) with a nice low heat (175-200) for a couple of hours. When it gets to the point of almost falling off the bone (this takes time to get a feel for) then I peel back the foil and toss in some wet logs for more smoke for another hour or so. A lot of the timing is experience and experimentation, which are both good excuses to hunt & eat.
Also, while the meat is smoking boil down the brine and it makes an excellent baste and/or sauce or addition to a sauce...
-ww