http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/11/the-food-lab-the-truth-about-brining-turkey-thanksgiving.html

I second what Steve said about procuring a fresh, (preferrably free range) bird if you can get it and afford it. And if you can get it and afford it, probably no need to either salt or brine if you tend it carefully. Because freezing also causes drying, a frozen turkey, untreated by either brine or a salt rub, is more likely to end up terribly dry.

I did a wet brine twice and it was a huge mess both times. First task Thanksgiving morning was completely cleaning out the turkey infused brine from the refrigerator, including the veggie and fruit bins, then thoroughly mopping up then sanitizing the flooded kitchen floor.

I'm not generally a huge fan of turkey and I do like the extra flavor of herbs that brining or doing a salt rub gives, and having played with both, prefer the salt rub, which is quite simple to do, doesn't overdue breaking down the muscle fibers, and does imbue the meat with a lovely, subtle flavoring of the chosen herbs. So I use a salt rub (my generally favorite recipe to follow) even with a fresh, free range bird. Or more likely these days, turkey breast rather than the whole bird.

The other 2 things I like about the salty dry rub is it does build in a bit of margin of error, and can make for better leftovers if I end up freezing turkey. 1. If I'm roasting a turkey it is for a big holiday feast for which I have also chosen to fix way too many side dishes and may be unable to leave one dish I'm prepping alone just when I need to check and possibly remove the Turkey at the end of roasting. The salt rub buys a little time if I leave the turkey in a little longer than absolutely necessary. 2. Left over turkey is dried out turkey. The more moist the left over turkey the less dry in leftover recipes.

I generally follow this recipe for a dry rub. If fixing a turkey breast or very small turkey I may do the breast down thing then turn, or may not. Tenting with foil seems to work fine most of the time. I also play around with oven temps, based on nothing rational and only after dithering for days after researching every English-language site on the web. I am settled on stsrting the Turkey at either 425 or 450F, and reducing the temp to 350 or 325F after 20-30 minutes. Can't tell you what goes into deciding. Probably has to do with size of bird on some unconscious level as well as some weird tactile info taken in while handling the raw bird just before putting in oven. I don' think those 25 degree variants probably make that much difference as the bird has turned out pretty good for years now, regardless.   

this is the recipe I more or less use. I also fine chop fresh sage, rosemary and thyme and just a little garlic and incorporate into the rub. The Judy Bird