i just start hunting... for one, i'm never in a hurry, and am always excited to start, whether spring or fall, and in both scenarios, things are changing constantly... spring, their food sources are pretty straightforward of course, so early season i like covering ground and getting a general idea what's getting green and what still needs time.
fall is a lot more going on of course, but the plan is similar, just cruise around and see what food is abundant (blackberries on the coast usually aren't ripe early August, south coast where there are black caps, they may be burnt out already in August, so it's just narrowing down the high yield food, then start figuring out what they are keying in on.... luckily, that's pretty easy, fall bear do a lot of pooping, so finding bear activity usually isn't too hard, and of course their scat has clues to what they are eating, but bear are wrecking balls in food sources, they make their kitchen obvious.... skunk cabbage, they will have a highway through it, tracks are easy to see in swamps, and it's easy to see where they are mowing down skunk cabbage.
elderberries, they just reach up and snap branches off, so if you see elderberries with a bunch of fresh broke branches, you know how they got that way... same with chittum and huckleberry, look for a bunch of broken branches... or with chittum trees, completely busted trees sometimes.
blackberry and black caps, they mash down big areas, and can be spotted a long ways off with optics because it exposes the more white colored underside of the leaves... always glass blackberry patches in the fall, because those spots bears are mashing down are pretty easy to see.
it's all pretty simple stuff, the hard part is walking by good food sources knowing they are currently focused on something else, they are pretty picky when there is a lot of food around, and i don't know why, i just know they are.
one more thing that i just thought of, late fall bear hunting (at least on the coast) the blue huckleberry is the last really good bear feed, when the blackberries and everything else goes away, those areas full of blue huckleberry will be THE spot to hunt bear, it's one of the best bear concentrators all year around here... those older thick clear cuts seem to be the place to find lots of them that are actually producing lots of fruit, and they stick around through October on the coast