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.
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.