US deer hunters urged to go for the doe

Doe, a deer, a female deer, is always the booby prize for hunters. What they crave is a virile animal with antlers - stuffed and mounted, the horned head of the male deer makes a fine trophy for the home, bar room or shop front.

But from this season onwards, hunters in America are being asked to put their masculine pride aside and shoot not the stags but the does instead.

Boxing Day signals the start of the great American deer hunt; until about 11 January men leave their sofas in droves, dress as if for paramilitary warfare, pack a few cans of beer and blast away at the deer who populate mountains, valleys, woods and farmland across the country.

But this time the authorities and many landowners are pleading for restraint, with special rules and a message to hunters: 'Spare the males.' This turnaround on predatory priorities is the result of an environmentally disastrous imbalance in their outcome: a dearth of males in the deer community and an overpopulation of does.

In some areas of the midwest and north-east, there are 10 females for every male. The lack of fellow stags to fight with means the remaining males mate more. The resulting explosion in deer numbers is causing big problems: rampages across fields and crops, damage to forests and increase in deer-car collisions. Last year Pennsylvania's hunters killed nearly half of the entire deer population - some 1.3 million. But now state authorities in New York, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Michigan and elsewhere are forming alliances with landowners to try not only to re-educate the hunters, but to turn them towards the best way of redressing the imbalance - killing does.

Disproportionate numbers of cheap, 'doe-only' hunting permits have been issued and 'doe-only' hunting periods have been added to the season. But it has been unpopular, and critics say it is useless anyway because of the hunters' determination to keep the deer population high in anticipation of this time of year. The hunters are in the most part defiant. Many have written to local papers bragging that they bought the $6 (£4) doe-hunting licences but then threw them away so no one else got them.

The American deer hunter looks unlikely to give up his horns just yet.