What does the public land around you look like? Much of it? I pretty much exclusively hunt public land here in Ohio. I have some farms offered to me if I wanted them but to be honest I don't have any problems where I hunt and I've been hunting the same spots for 20 years so I have them all figured out.
There are a few tips I could give you that'll help you hunt public land. Don't be afraid to walk. My experience has been most people are too lazy to hike very far so I will typically walk a little further than most. Bow hunt. The land I hunt has far less bow hunting pressure than gun pressure so during bow season I have a lot more freedom to move around without running into people. Get in the woods early. If you get in before everyone else then they run into you instead of you running into them. If/when I gun hunt down there I'm probably the first guy to start walking in of a morning. Try to find some spots that aren't easily found on maps. The last 3-4 years the amount of hunters has increased where I hunt and 99% of the people I ask say they found the place on the internet. They find the main road but there's another road about 2 miles off that isn't on the maps. I always have a stand or two up in that area for busy weekends when I know people are going to be hunting such as the rut.
Public land definitely has it's faults but you can successfully hunt it if you spend some time down there. I pattern other hunters just as much as I pattern deer.
I typically kill a couple deer a year and I'm fairly picky about what I shoot. I pass on a lot of 6 and 8 pointers waiting on a nice buck. I'll normally try to take a doe early so it's easier to let those smaller bucks go since I have meat in the freezer.