Does anyone have a Persian (mesopotamica) Fallow Deer available for hunting?

Are persian fallow deer any differeny than a standard fallow deer? If not there are several recent posts of nice ones people are offering.

I don't think that pure Mesopotamian Fallow are available, if the where, they would be subject to permits. It's quite common, in the deer farming business, to have some Mesopotamian blood in the line to increase the size and shorten the time to maturity. The Mesopotamian Fallow has less palmation so I doubt there's much incentive to try and go pure.

Short answer, No - they are protected and there isn't a permit system for them like some of the other endangered species (there's only a couple hundred in the wild as far as i understand). Every now and then you will see a buck that shows a lot of persian traits as they are in the mix with the farming business. I don't know of anyone who breeds pure persians - their horns really look totally different more mass and webbing than actual palmation.

Fallow Deer are my passion. I am looking for that Fallow Deer buck that shows the Persian traits. I currently have what I call the Fallow Deer slam, a Fallow Deer from the 5 continents where they live. I am missing Asia, as hunting Fallow Deer is not available in Asia currently (Iran, etc).

Check out this thread http://www.texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/5369806/1 I think that the Fallow show some Mesopotamian characteristics.

Would argue that neither fallow on that thread showed Persian. Quick google search of the Persians in Israel will show animals that have horns that look more like axis or barasingha - don't even really try to palm

Here are some pictures I'm basing my opinion on



The pictures come from this site http://www.biolib.cz/en/image/id176440/

Those bucks have what we call in Australia a "cleft" which is a split through the palm. To us it's a major defect and for our scoring system can pull a buck right down from what he would otherwise. They can look aesthetically pleasing though. Not what I would consider a Persian trait though.

When your talking about hybrids you expect something intermediate. With Mesopotamian you expect lots of points with webbing between with European you expect palmation. I would argue that deep clefts are an intermediate characteristic. I've read that some have argued that the presence of clefts in some populations of Australian fallow is due to Mesopotamian blood.

Personally I'd doubt that but it does interest me, if you could find the reference material you got that from I'd be interested to have a read. There is a book called "An Introduction to deer in Australia" which is what we consider our deer bible in this country and I don't recall anything along those lines from it but I'm always prepared to be proven wrong.
I still do think it's just a fault, similarly to how red deer can often be missing a bez tine (there are some people that attribute this to a theory that Sika and red deer hybridised when first released - which is just nonsense). In those pics you showed the antler length of the black and live bucks is short because they look like quite young deer. Our Australian deer e.g. reds, fallow, sambar are slow maturing and don't reach their potential until between the ages of 8-12. Genetics also comes into it though, some areas are just never going to produce good heads the same as some other areas always are going to.

It was mentioned in an Australian Bowhunting Forum, I used to read, when i could still pull a bow. The substance of the argument is that some of the fallow released came from the Middle East. I don't think it's documented but I do know that one ranch in Texas that was documented to have Mesopotamian blood does show clefts. It would be interesting to survey venison ranches with known Mesopotamian blood to see if they have a high percentage of clefts in their breeder bucks.

Clefts are a defect or a young animal from my ex

Clefts are a defect or a young animal from my experience. 15 years ago I bought some fallow from a deer farm near hondo and the breeder pointed out some traits in his herd he attributed to 1/4 or 1/2 meso blood. From what I saw it shows itself with more mass, more tines between the brow and palm (inners and junk). Hard to say for sure, but the pen he claimed to carry the meso blood all tended to show these traits, and generally had weaker palms - though they often had a ridge in the middle/inside of the palm with a couple points on it. They were noticably bigger in body size.

One comment I read said that the increased size for venison carries over up to 1/32. Like I said it would be interesting to see if clefts are a characteristic of Meso blood, a photo survey of the breeders at venison farms, should show one way or another. I'm beating my head, trying to remember the Texas ranch where it was claimed that clefts were due to Meso blood, it's one of the big breeding ranches but I can't remember. It could also be an excuse for sub par genetics.

NSMike - what I saw in the supposed meso hybrid pen could be called internal clefts. They still had a solid outer palm, but the inside ridge sometimes separated a bit - hard to explain, but I've seen it a couple times on our deer.

My understanding is just about all tx fallow have some meso in them b/c the English parks were some of the first to cross it into their animals way back in the day.

This thread has me wondering if part of the reason that some of the most outstanding fallow trophies come from Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Their population don't trace back to English deer parks like so many other populations.

I couldn't agree more, I've grown up with a clsoe family friend who farms fallow and teh bucks that are inevitably going to grow out the biggest have clefts as young bucks. My theory is that their so genetically geared to grow massive antlers that their body tries to push out as much as they can but just isn't quite ready to finish the job, so to speak. Though it's generally a very different type of cleft to the defect type.

Because fallow are one of our main deer we Aussies love to notice the little things I guess you could say. When I think about persian fallow the first thing that comes to mind is the forward facing tines, If you look at the pics on the first page you'll see what I mean. Normal fallow have a brow and trez tine (don't know the american names for them) and that's it, the only other tines they have are a guard facing backwards and the palms spellers. I've never seen, nor heard of any fallow that have looked even remotely like a persian type antler. Again I'm happy to be proven wrong, I find it all very interesting but I just don't see it, or at least I don't see clefts having any link to persians.