Re: Newbie question: How to get into hunting
YouTube is your friend. There's so much excellent informative hunting content on there and you could learn so much in the off season by educating yourself with a bunch of those videos. And then you can apply what you learned in the field. Lots of great books out there too.
There's a number of folks on here who didn't have someone to teach them how to hunt while growing up. I had lots of anglers in my family but no hunters and had to learn everything on my own. Its a steep learning curve but extremely rewarding.
Like you were mentioning the best way to learn is to immerse yourself, so after you educate yourself on the basics, pick an area and get out there and start practicing the basics (like moving extremely slowly and silently and constantly looking around and recognizing sign etc). The more you practice these things the more natural they become.
Now is a great time of year to get out there and do some scouting to find an area that holds animals. Once you find that area you should become extremely focused on learning everything about that area and figure out how to hunt it. This can take years to learn but its vital if you want to be successful you need to learn the best ways to get in and out of your hunting spot with as little disturbance as possible, knowing the prevailing winds and thermals and where the animals like to hang out and when they're there.
Get a couple trail cams once you've identified your hunting spot and set them up where game trails intersect or near a food source or bedding area. Don't bounce around to new hunting areas every few weeks until you've got your first hunting area really well dialed in.
These things take time to learn so don't get discouraged - that's the nature of the beast. Good luck and go get em' tiger
"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority." - Benjamin Franklin
"The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it" - George Orwell