It is historically native to Türkiye and possibly the Italian Peninsula, Balkan Peninsula, and the island of Rhodes near Anatolia. Prehistorically native to and introduced into a larger portion of Europe, it has also been introduced to other regions in the world. For instance, around 100,000 fallow deer live in the UK, where it is thought that fallow deer were introduced by the Normans (95% of these are in England). It should be noted, that while they have been introduced where they do not belong, all over the place, there are other places where efforts have been made, but failed due to predation. When visiting Spain, I was told about a local reserve which had spent a great deal translocating deer to their reserve, but the wolves ate every single individual, that first winter. As such, this may well be a species whose range would decline significantly if predators such as the wolf and lynx were allowed to recover across more of their range.

Some people classify the Persian deer as a subspecies, though as the majority do not go with this, we will list them as separate species.

Its population in its native range has been in decline for some time, and in turkey where it is known to be native and has disappeared everywhere except within the Düzlerçami Game Reserve in the Mount Güllük-Termessos National Park.

There are many other areas where it may be native: where we find species is not necessarily their native range, given that it is not only modern humans to drive species to extinction.