Here are a few resources that show various characteristics for different tree species. All of these sources have a table depicting different tolerances.
Tree pH table
http://www.bonsai4me.com/AdvTech/AT%20tree%20ph%20ranges.htm
Shade and flood tolerant species
https://utextension.tennessee.edu/publications/Documents/SP656.pdf
Species tolerant of alkaline soils
http://ccesuffolk.org/assets/galleries/Agriculture/Commercial-Nursery-and-Landscape-Management/Trees-Tolerant-of-High-Soil-pH-1-11.pdf
Wide range of species and remarks
http://www.state.sc.us/forest/urbsg04.htm
http://www.mortonarb.org/tree-plant-advice/article/876/large-deciduous-trees-for-the-home-landscape.html
Being able to get White Oaks growing will be a great benefit in the long run. Deer favor White Oak acorns pretty heavily as many deer hunters know. Some other natural browse that I often see spoken of as whitetail preferences are Sumac, Goldendrod, and Bush Honeysuckle in summer, and Dogwood, Mountain Maple, White Cedar, Ash, Willow, and Hazel. Alot of these are family taxa and not species, each family has several species and those preference differ some as well (For instance a White Oak vs a Pin Oak). Here is an online book I found a while back that you might find useful; on the left you can search “deer” and find all the matches on the available pages.
http://books.google.com/books?id=usQpGoE0mPEC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=Midwest+Natural+Deer+Browse+Species&source=bl&ots=1xG2hDU02X&sig=d4WRfY8aKAKWEMMietZxDyl8qi0&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
Fire can be very beneficial to many habitats, especially coniferous stands and grass prairies. However, if you have alot of under story fuel, downfalls/thickets/saplings it could get nasty very fast; or it could get to hot and kill some of your desired trees. I have looked into burning alot (I mean alot alot) as we have several CRP fields; understanding the difference between a hot burn and cold burn, when each is needed + taking humidy/dewpoint variables into account-gets me leary to go about it with out having an experienced professional on hand for the first time. Luckily (and unluckily) for us, our CRP fields are flooded out heavily every several years which seems to create the occasional disturbance these stands need to really take off again.
If I were in your shoes, which I am with the exception that I am dealing with mature deciduous growth versus coniferous growth, I would be contacting some DNR, NRCS, or US Forest Service guys. Look online for your local or regional directories and give some of these guys a call. Wisconsin has great wildlife/fisheries/forestry programs at UW Stevens Point, give a professor a call and chat. Worst off they don’t call back, o well 
I am currently finishing up my masters degree and work with members of the DNR, MPCA, River Boards, Professors. I cant say that I have met one person yet that isn’t willing to help someone out with their own restoration/management effort. These are all people who are devoting their careers to the environment and are almost always hunters/fisherman themselves. Catch even the grumpy guy on a good day and they’ll chat your ear off about this kind of stuff. Also, these are the guys that are in the field working on various projects (example: Forest Management Plans/Restorations) ask if you tag along a day or two if the opportunity arises. Being able to get in the field for even a few hours with some of these guys that really know forest management will yield a ton of info. Like todders said, these are the guys that know more about it than most people will learn in a lifetime.
One final thing, you mentioned not wanting to do soil tests. I can definitely see where your coming from if you don’t want to spend a bunch of money working through some of this stuff. However, the thing about pH (you mentioned acidic soils) is that pH has the capacity to drive the form of some ionic species. Different plants/trees utilize different ionic species of a nutrient. For example Phosphorus (Labeled as P2O5 on your fertilizer bag) has various ionic species that different plants hold the capacity to utilize. The ionic species are essentially the bio-available forms of the nutrients. The ionic species of a given nutrient present is driven by pH. pH is the concentration/molarity of hydrogen atoms (H+ for acids, OH- for bases). Therefore, as H+ or OH- builds up in your soils it will change the ionic species of phosphorus. The two ionic phosphorus species plants use are H2PO4- and HPO4 -2. This exchange occurs at a pH of around 7.2. Hence why pH of soil is important. Now in other cases, such as Nitrogen, moisture has the capacity to drive ionic species through bonding. Nitrogen is very water soluble, hence why you can loose nitrogen to the atmosphere if Urea (fertilizer) is left on surface without rain fall). Anyways, what Im getting at is pH of your soil is pretty important when it comes to providing nutrients to your given species of plant.
Hope something in here helped 
