>>17791291. Master licensing and regulations for your state
2. Arm & equip
3. Find land to hunt. Public land is out there, both state and federal. Most people hunt private land by leasing hunting rights from the landowner. It's hard to get your foot in the door to private land. Hunting clubs exist to do this, and you can also see who owns every parcel in the county by using the county tax assesor's website (where applicable). You can write to landowners or knock on doors to ask permission but I have never tried that.
4. Learn deer behavior and scout out places on the land to set up your stand(s) based on it. You can also hunt sitting on the ground, but deer see very well at ground level.
Basically, find land and buy a how-to book. Then you're 80% of the way there. This assumes you can already shoot.
I do most of the hunting there is. Archery, muzzleloader and rifle for deer and bear; archery and shotgun for turkey; shotgun for upland fowl. I do not into waterfowl but I should.
Getting into archery also opens the tech tree for bowfishing.
