With my parents or family that hunted or had land my best friend and I taught ourselves to hunt on public land in high school, eventually with a few good aldeer members here we ran into along the way who are now dear friends of mine. What you're experiencing is the usual among your average hunter hunting public land. The book "Mapping Trophy Bucks" by Brad Herndon is the best resource to learn how deer use terrain IMO, but if you really want to change your hunting world join a club. The $900 we coughed up for our first club wasnt fun or easy for us at the time, but it changed our hunting life and was well worth it.