RE: deepwoods hunting
I ran into this situation when I moved back to MT five years ago. I hunt huge tracts of USFS land, with unbroken timber for miles. Okay, there is the occasional clearcut or small opening scattered around. I had some trouble for a couple years, then I changed my tactics.
What turned it around for me was abandoning stand hunting and taking up stillhunting. By moving slowly through the woods, I upped my deer sightings about five-fold. I've found in such environments that finding good stand sites is an exercise in futility. All the classic stuff about funnels really doesn't work so well in this type of country. If you must stand hunt, I'd recommend using a double or triple funnel stategy, find a spot that has two different classes of funnels in the same spot. If you can find an inside corner to a clearcut that also adjoins a saddle, you might have something there.
In still hunting, I think of it as stand hunting on the move, I'll choose my exact footfalls take two slow careful steps and stop, look around for 30 seconds to 5 minutes, then repeat. Again, I went from one or on a great day, two deer sightings per day, up to 5-6 sightings on a normal day. Moving that slowly I'll see most of the deer before they see me, it runs about 60-40 in my favor. Even the 40% that detect me first are usually unsure for a few seconds, so I can still shoot them if I choose.