After you cut the fruit bearing trees out you had 3 or so years of browse that the deer could reach they would feed thru. Then the preferred feed got too high for the deer to reach and it wasn't old enough to produce fruit. Planting all the food plot area you can is your best bet to attract the deer back to the land. You might try fertilizing any briar patches you have and planting Japanese Honeysuckle in the bottoms is good deer forage.