RE: how many acres
I think it depends on a lot of the things others have said here, plus one or two others (at least). My wife and I own 98 acres with a fair amount of deer on itthat we share (own together) with my hunting buddy and his wife. That can be a nice situation to have, sharing costs and maintenance, etc. with a good hunting buddy you see eye-to-eye with.
It’s a beautiful piece of mostly wooded land (pretty even mix of evergreens and hardwoods, mostly oak and hickory) with several small ridges at the foot of a mountain with a small amount of pasture at the bottom and (other people’s) corn fields about two hundred yards below it.
But the real key to its success as a great deer hunting habitat, IMO, is the public land behind it. It’s George Washington National Forest (over a million acres), with no public access points (other than private landowners like us) for 6 miles in any direction.
The deer get some pressure from a neighbor who hunts year round (illegally), bagging 20 to 30 deer per year, according to a couple of his cousins, who I know. Luckily, he mostly hunts with a bow out of season. So the deer are always somewhat wary, but they’re huntable with a bow in the national forest until rifle season, when it becomes much tougher to hunt in the national forest. Then I hunt with a bow on our land, which then becomes a “safe haven” with all the noisy activity going on in the national forest.
By the way, we are selling this piece of land after this hunting season, if anyone is interested. We’re going to build a house on a 40 acre parcel near the top of a high ridge (also borders on national forest with no public access nearby) and need to sell this parcel for the cash to build.