There are two poems in the Hyakunin Isshu that mention deer, numbers 5 and 83, and they are as follows:

奥山に紅葉踏み分け鳴く鹿の声きくときぞ秋はかなしき
"Deep in the mountains, I hear the deer's cry as he walks through crimson leaves: at these times I feel autumn's sadness."
世の中よ道こそなけれ思ひ入る山の奥にも鹿ぞ鳴くなる
"O world! There is no escape! Though deep in thought and in the mountains, I hear even the deer crying."

Now I've read both of these a few times, not to mention many other Japanese poems that reference the cry of the deer, but it only occurred to me today (yes! I do have a lot of free time, thanks for asking!) that I don't actually know what noise these poems are talking about.

Which is not to say they don't evoke a sound in my imagination. They do. But it's a shakuhachi playing Shika no Toone -- a deep, woody (OK, bambooey) sound which probably isn't much like an actual deer's voice.

So, to remedy this deficiency in my understanding, I decided to seek out some deer calls, and found this neat page. Go halfway down and you'll see a big color diagram indicating which kind of deer makes which call at whom -- you can click on the arrows the calls are written in, or use the menu below if you're browsing with Lynx.

I believe that numbers 1 ("fiiyoo, fiiyoo, fiiyoo" or "fyuun, fyuun, fyuun"), 3 ("myuun") and 4 ("miifuun") are the calls that these poems are specifically referring to, and man, are they freaky. They don't make me melancholy. They make me want to invent stories about terrifying squealing goblins out in the woods.

To summarise, idle, artsy-fartsy nobles who drooped about the place one thousand years ago quaking at the thought of taboo compass directions and literally dying of broken hearts, were manlier than me.