We both have been empty handed the last three years. Both my boys are sports nuts, so my hunting time is pretty limited. We've pretty much been learning as we go. We live on 21 acres, but the area is probably over 1000 acres of woods. We've had to learn how to hunt on our land, it isn't real easy, we had our land logged about 15 years ago, so there are thousands of saplings about the size of your wrist and smaller, which makes hunting difficult, but the deer seem to love the cover. I've got the hunting stand in a great place in my opinion now.
I bought a great muzzleloader last christmas for myself, a CVA accura, great gun, but, I didn't even have time to hunt with it this year because of football, but my feeling is it will last a lifetime, my kids won't be kids forever! I hunt with a remington woodmaster 742.