One point that is dwelled upon in Episode 1 and mentioned elsewhere, is that it appeared to be out of the ordinary for Zeldin to have left the dog in the truck when he went into the woods. As I hunter, and also a man who also takes his dog everywhere, I would never take my dog into an area that I was going to hunt. I don't bait but I hunt areas where I run my dog nightly. During hunting season, my dog is run on the dirt roads and I have never taken him near a stand that I hunt.
Dogs and deer are not friends in the natural world. A rambling, unleashed dog leaves behind loads of detectable (by deer) scents including feces, urine, shampoo (if it's a lap dog) and pad scent. Deer in remote areas of the pines such as this are even more wary of canine scent since domestic dogs are canines and so are coyotes. The only domestic dogs those pines deer might have ever met would have been the occasional pack of not-so-deer-proof fox hounds. If Zeldin was truly a skilled hunter, he would not have taken the dog with him to check or bait a stand, in my opinion.