A highly adaptable species that can survive in a wide range of habitats and can exploit a wide spectrum of food resources, depending on the availability and accessibility. The main factors affecting species distribution are freshwater along with high altitude and long snowy winters. The most suitable habitats are plains and slightly rugged or hilly areas covered by deciduous or mixed mature woodland with grassy and brushy open areas. Habitat use changes seasonally with food availability and accessibility, differs between daytime and nighttime and varies a lot according to sex and age classes.

Populations are currently expanding into areas composed of a mosaic of human settlements gardens, orchards, parks, farmland, and pastures; in such habitats, human activity may greatly affect the distribution, population dynamics and behaviour of deer. For example, females that beg consistently food from humans produce heavier fawn at birth which is associated with survival advantages (Griffin et al. 2022). This human-wildlife feeding interactions providing reproductive advantages for the individuals involved has been interpreted as a driver of artificial selection in wild populations (Griffin et al. 2022).

The Common Fallow Deer is one of the most widespread introduced mammals in Europe. At present, it is difficult to define in detail the species range because of numerous voluntary or accidental introductions and local extinctions. Distributional data are deficient and/or outdated for the following countries Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Ukraine and European Russia; the presence of the species in these countries is reported as “uncertain” in the countries occurrence table. In the same table the origin of the Balkan populations is indicated with the category “introduced” in those countries where Early Holocene deer remains are not available and with the category “origin uncertain” in those countries where Early Holocene deer remains were found and studied, but it still remains uncertain whether the Common Fallow Deer is native or introduced.

At the beginning of the Late Pleistocene, the Common Fallow Deer lived in continental Europe and southern Western Asia. It commonly occurred in faunal assemblages from the Last Interglacial (c. 130,000–115,000 B.C.) of mid-latitude Europe, as far north as Britain and southern Scandinavia (Masseti and Vernesi 2014). During the Last Glacial period, this deer retreated into the southern areas of its former distribution, and survived in southern Anatolia, southern Italy, Sicily, and southern Balkan Peninsula (Masseti and Vernesi 2014). During the Last Glacial Period, this deer retreated into the southern areas of its range. Two areas have been suggested as glacial refugia: southern Anatolia (Masseti and Vernesi 2014, Masseti 2023, Baker et al. 2024a,b) and southern and central Balkans (Karastoyanova et al. 2020, Baker et al. 2024a,b) but, according to the Baker et al. 2024a, the latter suggestion “is open to revision based on further genetic and archaeozoological data”. The identification of southern Italy and Sicily as further glacial refugia of the species is challenged by the finding of few deer remains in Neolithic contexts with faunal elements of eastern origin such as the wild goat Capra aegagrus and the Asiatic mouflon Ovis gmelini (Masseti and Vernesi 2014, Miccichè and Masseti 2024).

The Common Fallow Deer did not naturally recolonise the former range after the Last Glacial period (Haltenorth 1959, Heidemann 1976, 1986; Stuart 1991, Baker et al. 2017). In the eastern Mediterranean, archaeozoological evidence suggests that translocations of this deer began in the Neolithic, increasing during the Bronze Age when it began to be translocated also into the western Mediterranean (Masseti and Vernesi 2014). The Romans introduced the Fallow Deer as far as Britain (Baker et al. 2017). It cannot be excluded that medieval and post-medieval introductions gave rise to many populations today occurring in Europe (Masseti and Vernesi 2014, cf. Baker et al. 2024b).

Its original range is unclear, but current knowledge suggests that Türkiye and southern Europe were the post-glacial refuges of the specie. The expansion of this species beyond the Old World was attributed to British colonialism (Chapman and Chapman 1980, Masseti 1996 and 2011, Perdikaris 2018). Currently, the Common Fallow Deer is one of the most widespread deer species in the world. Free-living herds have been established in America, South Africa, Oceania and also on several small and medium-sized islands in different parts of the globe (De Marinis et al. 2022). Many deer are also maintained in captivity for exhibition, hunting or commercial production of meat and antler velvet.

The species is listed on Appendix III of the Bern Convention and CITES Appendix I (as D. dama mesopotamica).