For next year, find a white oak tree and pour a bag of fertilizer around the end of the leaves or what is called the driplines. The deer will love the bigger, sweeter acorns.

In my younger years I hunted near farmlands and set up along well traveled runs. But over the past 15 or so years I've hunted exclusively timber areas. Finding food sources is often difficult as mast crops change from year to year. We haven't had a white oak acorn crop in several years. Depending mostly on the red and chestnut oaks. To supplement this there is plenty of browse in the form of sassafras and black birch. I've found that my best bet for seeing deer is to set my stands on pinch points and cuts (between strip mines) or along ridge lines.
Patience is key when hunting these areas as well as confidence in your set up. Stay as odor free as possible. I rarely use a scent, even a cover scent. I am of the opinion that no scent is the best.

Hunting with the wind in your favor is huge, especially when hunting booners. You always want your scent blowing away from where the deer come from or where you think. Set up cameras record the wind direction in a diary for each day and play the odds. What's the rush after you shoot? Sit there calm your nerves and enjoy that adrenaline rush. The worst thing you could do is push a wounded deer. He make get up from a bed never to be found cause he clotted up while bedding.

Read, read, read. Get out in the woods as much as possible, everything you see, do, think about, everything that happens to you, research it and figure out how to use to your advantage the next hunt or next season.

Good information. To help you with number 3 - get you a good blood tracking light (outrigger outdoors bloodhound blood tracking light is what I run and recommend) to track down a gut shot or less than perfect shot on a deer after about 30 minutes. Usually by then the adrenaline has wore off and they are sore and don't want to move much.

If you plane to rattle antlers from your tree stand...drill a hole just above the base of each antler, with a big enough diameter for a nylon parachute cord. Tie the two together, about a foot apart, and then tie another piece of cord to the middle of the string, that is long enough to reach the ground from your stand. The deer expects the buck fight to be on the ground and not in your treestand.

Lower the antlers to the ground and shake the cord lightly, so that the antlers are only ticking together with occasional grunts mixed in --- If no response...shake the cord more vigorously, so that the antlers are clashing together and hopping up and down off the ground. If a buck comes in an starts to lose interest and starts to walk away...just shake the cord lightly so that the antlers are only just ticking together --- The buck should stop in his tracks and possibly afford you a going away lung shot.

Here in Maryland...I like too start to rattle October 21 on.

I search out where different types of trees/brush/cover meet. For example where oaks meet pines meet cedar meet brush. The more types the better! Deer are browsers and follow edges. The more types of edges the better. Years ago I bought and used color infrared aerial photos. Each type of tree/brush/cover will be a different color. Now a days I use google earth and historicaerials.com to find my spots. Good Luck!

I prefer a second focal plane riflescope for deer hunting.

On top of what's already been said. Minimize your prescense in the area by staying out of your area during season unless you are hunting. Find quiet access routes to your stand. Be a scent control freak, fooling a deer's nose is half the battle. And lastly, HUNT HARD. Invest lots of time in the stand and opportunity will present itself. Good luck

Florida Whitetail Experience

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well its a learned skill, but modern technology makes it much easier,
deer need to feel fairly safe and have access to food, they don,t want to be constantly disturbed, but they learn very quickly that most hunters (preditors)
in the case of humans tend to be rather noisy and tend to travel on trails, they learn to move into cover and areas humans avoid like wet areas,
areas bordered by deep creeks and thick brush or bramble thickets, etc.
If you want to get to be effective at hunting youll need too spent a good deal of time out in the field observing,
but you need to know exactly where you are in relation to the areas features and access roads and you need to know how to get back to a specific location.
each area has its quirks and less productive areas, and you need to identify feed, bedding and travel corridors
use an ACCURATE GPS it is you best friend, get a book on what plants local deer prefer,
call and talk to game wardens and the local biologists,
buy a good topo map of the area, buy a decent cheap digital camera and if available fairly recently taken aerial photos of the area
go home and locate a lets say 3 mile square area and divide the area into a grid of lets say 1/8th mile sections,
and label each lets say with letters a-z vertically and 1-27 vertically
now get a note book and you GPS and any time you see anything of interest,
lets say deer, a tree stand, a scrape, road access a heavily used game trail, use the note book,
use that grid and GPS to pinpoint both its location and grid and the time of day and date!
over a few months or ideally, years you'll build a very accurate map detailing where deer were seen,
where and when they travel,and what they feed on,youll learn the best stand locations, bedding areas and game trails, and escape routes