ORIGINAL: SST
For starters, hunt where the deer are. Pre-season scouting is a vital part of successful hunting. Be patient. If you hunt where the deer are, and you stay put long enough, you'll probably get your chance. While you're waiting patiently, be sure that game can't see, smell, or hear you. Their senses are far better tuned than ours. If you are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take game, hopefully, you are competent with your chosen bow or firearm. That requires lots of practice before season.
I would do scouting, but unfortunately I haven't really been able to as I started early December last season, and this season I'm just jumping right in as soon as I'm home on break. I don't know if deer is open for shotgun when I'm home (November 18th-December 2nd), so if it isn't then I'll be able to scout some while I'm small game hunting. And yeah, I haven't even seen a live deer yet while I'm hunting. I don't know if this is because they are scenting or seeing me before I see them, or if it's the large quantity of horse riders, quadders, and others that usually come through and scare away anything there before something shows up. Last season I just did still hunting and a little stand or tree hunting. I'm good at being quiet though. I wear full camo, and if I can I like to take whatever blaze orange I have such as a cap and hang it in a tree above me where it would be more easily visible to hunters. I'll probably get some of my own cover scent or lure scent this season, but beside that I keep my hunting clothes stored in a trash bag full of leaves and dirt. As fire shotgun competency, I did some clay shooting over the summer, but that's the extent of my practice as my family does not own guns, shoot, or hunt, and I can only do any of this when friends can. Last season the two times I actually got a good shot at a squirrel and pheasant, I dropped them each with my first shot. I might have also taken another two pheasants, but I won't know as they went down in the vicinity of other hunters, and they will and have taken me and my friends birds. I'd prefer to avoid an argument when everyone's holding a loaded shotgun.
NJ/PAbwhunter
I'm going to college in Rochester, NY, but I have four weeks of breaks during hunting season. I
do have a bow, a thirty-year old Bear compound. I haven't taken the bowhunting course yet, though, as with work over the summer and now college I have had very little time to practice. I did get my bow updated with a new cable, sight, rest, and hopefully some more things once I have more time to shoot it. I live in central Jersey, right outside Trenton, and last season I hunted in the Assunpink, Colliers Mills, and a few little pieces of land around New Egypt. This season I will probably just be doing shotgun unless I can get in lots of practice and jump on the last bowhunting class the state offers in November.