I try to get my cameras out in early June. I don't believe in scent control so my antecdote is to get em out early. I'd put them out earlier but I want full foliage so I can trim as needed to avoid 5,000 pics of a blowing leaf. I also like getting them out then so I can jump fawns. You can tell how fresh they are and backdate conception dates and know when lockdown was the year before, and when it will probably be this year. For me, that's always the third week of November, but fun to confirm.
I hang my cameras in pinch points adjacent to buck bedding areas, roughly 10-12' up the tree. I think keeping cameras out of.a deers direct field of vision has more of an impact on not spoiling the spot than scent.
Somehow I rarely get night time pics, probably cause I'm always so tight to bedding.
I hang cameras in pairs of 2 or 3 all covering different parts of the terrain feature I'm on. Its eye opening how weak trail cameras are as a scouting tool when you catch a deer move through a relatively small area but only show up on one or two cameras.
One of each of those groups of cameras is a cell cam. I use that to tell me if the area is worth monitoring. No cell cam pics for a month and I'm going in to check the other one or two near it. If they're getting pics, I leave everything alone. If they're not, I move the whole set somewhere else. Rarely happens as I've got my hunting spots dialed in over the years.
I run energizer max batteries. When I pull my cameras in late November/early December, they're rarely less than 50% (usually still above 90%) and it saves me money not buying lithium. Even in the cold of northern Michigan those batteries do just fine.
I don't hunt the spots I have trail cameras, at least not until late October. I don't check them with boots on the ground until I'm hunting in their vicinity. For me they're just an inventory tool, even though I have a seriously OCD spreadsheet for all mature buck pics that I will use to look for patterns. I don't use that spreadsheet for anything under 2.5. I also delete all 1.5 year old buck pics and all doe pics, not interested in them. That said, I start paying attention to what the does are doing the last week in October and I'll often find myself hunting the places does were during June when I'm out in November.