RE: finding a bedding area
The more you hunt an area, the more you can put the pieces of the puzzle together and determine where the deer are bedding. First things. If you find thick nasty stuff in the otherwise open woods, you can be pretty sure that at least some deer bed in that area. Alot of your understanding of deer bedding areas will be found when the hunting season actually starts and you are able to get out and see what is moving at what times, and from directions. Then you can start piecing things together.
There are some no brainer places that I just know deer are bedded when I find them in the off-season. Places high on the sides of hills with thickets (mostly pine) or mountain laurel, and those places usually have a prevailing wind that hits from the "rear" of where the deer are bedded. They use their eyes to scan below, and their noses to smell behind them ( this is not something anyone ever told me, it is just something I have witnessed time and time again).