Jennabug, most hunters follow the lead of whatever state agency is responsible for monitoring game populations and their year-to-year variation. Agency biologists may decide to do things like reduce antlerless (doe deer, cow elk) harvest until populations have recovered to some minimum level. On rare occasion, seasons may be closed in a given management unit. Hunters at a local level may decide among themselves to not hunt certain kinds of animals, based on their own observations. For example, in my area, some of the landowners up and down the creek valley I hunt decided to request that all archery and muzzleloader hunters refrain from harvesting whitetail does this last year, despite the legality of taking does in these seasons, because of locally observed whitetail mortality. I hope that helps.
