With fresh snow (lbut not TOO fresh that the deer haven't had a chance to make tracks), you should be able to easily identify if there are at least deer in the area. That's the very first step. Keep in mind that a doe and her fawns will make a lot more footpritns than a lone buck.... not sure what you're chasing.
Once you find tracks, start following them. Often they'll lead to other tracks.... which will lead to other tracks. Mark all of these on your phone (OnX, Google Maps, etc). Obviously mark anything else deer related you fiind, poop, beds, etc. Better than a pin is to actually mark the "track" as you walk it, at least that what it's called on OnX. Bring an extra phone charger. My phone can't make it all day with the GPS running, especially in the cold.
While following tracks, note on your phone if it looks like a heavy trail, a once used trail, a trail with both old and new tracks, i look like a solitary deer, a group, a doeand fawns, which direction the tracks are, if it's going in both directions, etc. etc. Take pictures of everything and annotate your notes on your hunting app with them. You might think you can remember this in your head, but I promise that noting it in detail on your phone is the way to go.
Also definitely note evidence of other hunters. This one is a little tricky. On one hand you want to avoid other hunters. On the other hand, maybe that hunter knows the area well. On the other hand maybe they have no idea what they're doing..... hah.
When you get home to your computer, take a look at all the trails and tracks and notes you marked. Once you're in front a computer and a topo/sattelite map you can try to start to make sense of stuff. At the very least you can see where there is a heavier density of deer activity.
If you think you can pick a good stand from just that info, then get to hunting. Alternatively, you can always hunt a nice looking trail even if you have no idea where that trail is going from/to. Although, at least by me, the heaviest and most obvious of trails seem to be night-time use only.... usually to and from a valuable and isolated food source, like baitpiles or a roadside patch of green stuff. I'm sure your food sources will be much different than mine. I currently could not tell you what the f*** the deer are eating here right now aside from bait and roadside greens.
Even if I can't put the complete puzzle together (which is 95% of the time lol), trails around presumed bedding are a good bet, at least by me. I avoid walking into the actual bedding (swamps for me).
When I know that there's an area with a lot of tracks, but can't make sense of them, my next step is usually an observation sit. If you can manage the cold, sit all day from a safe, concealed spot with a good viewpoint and some binoculars and just try to observe what's going on. From there you can finally start hunting.
I know that's a lot of work before ever even grabbing your bow, but if you're totally new to the area, this is a good way to go. If you're a smarter and more experienced hunter than myself, you can probably glean this info from topos and aerials and finding more subtle trails and deer sign without snow. But for me, snow is gold.
Obviously this strategy relies on snow.......... and the weather never cooperates. But with the season going to Jan 9 and this being wI, hopefully you get some snow soon down there soon. Although the immediate forecast doesn't look great. Granted gun season is still going on, so tracks now might not tell you much about the deer in a few weeks.
Without snow, you can at the very least look for parked cars. What info can you learn from that? Well for one, it's good to know where there's pressure. You can also try chatting up someone as they are entering/leaving their truck. People are hit and miss........ some will be offended at your mere presence, but you could get lucky and run into a nice guy who can help you out with the area. Crowded area might not be a bad thing..... maybe there's people there becausue there's deer there. Although generally I would start with harder to access areas away from any nearby cities.
As a final word, I would say that there are pockets of good areas and pockets of bad areas within any given tract of public land. So just getting a general reccomendation like "hunt blah blah state forest" is a good starting point, but without that, take a look at all the public land available to ya and look at topos and aerials and see if you can at least pick a starting point. If not, then start with the shortest drive!
sagittarius's Link
Humans moving deer (game farms and hunters transporting kills) is responsible for the rapid spread of CWD. Organically, CWD spreads very slowly, and would of never made it's way here from out west.
I'm personally not too overly concerned with eating CWD meat. I think falling out of a tree, eating too much red meat, or getting t-boned by a driver on the way to your hunting spot is probably a bigger risk, but I would be hesitant to feed it to friends and family, at least without informing them first. I get all my deer tested, mostly because I want to to ensure bait bans! I'm even forking over $30 and trekking to UPS to get UP MI deer lymph nodes tested.