If you're going to be hunting public land, you need to do much, much more scouting than hunting. You can get away with "observation hunts" on private land, but not in the poorly regulated lands of Illinoise.
Learn how to scout. If you walked in the woods right now, you wouldn't have a clue what you're doing, so do some serious research on scouting public land.
http://www.thehuntingbeast.com
The hunting beast is the best collection of information you'll find on learning how to find and hunt public land deer.
If you're going to hunt public land:
1. Scout more than you hunt. Now is the perfect time.
2. Never, ever, ever sit on a field edge unless you don't want to kill a deer
3. Figure out exactly where the deer bed and WHY (wind, cover and terrain normally) and use your head to figure out how to hunt the deer.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk