I normally get 3-5 IF but no more, because IF is a diminishing return skill. Many other skills such as wound treatment and pathfinding are diminishing return (but pathfinding is super useful regardless) For example going from 9 wound treatment to 10 is 10/190 or about a 5% increase only.
Increasing return skills are training, surgery, first aid and maybe a few more. At low levels, those skills are barely noticeable, but at high levels they're game changing.
I normally start off with a blunt lance, a strong, fast horse like a deer horse, 1-2 shields and go lance vaskerries for easy profit and experience. run around them a few times first until they run out of axes to throw. Since they will be chasing you, you can pick flat plains to engage. If the battle map sucks, you press tab to leave battle and choose between three maps to fight in.