I was accidentally sitting on a deer’s pathway once and after she scared me to death and I scared her to death she stood some distance away and started making huffing sounds at me. At first I didn’t think they were coming from her, but they were. She just stood there and kept huffing at me. I didn’t know deer did that. Anyway, I removed myself from her path. I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. A buck at that same preserve huffed me too when I was on the proper trail. He was quite far off, but I was a bit surprised. I am sort of scared to go anywhere anymore.
It’s called a snort. It’s an alarm/warning call. Basically, she was telling other deer that there was something there to be concerned about. Deer will also stamp as a warning. Does have an interesting variety of grunts, bleats, and other sounds. There are a few around our house that have fawns and you can hear the does calling the fawns when they come back to get them after feeding. It’s pretty neat stuff. Here’s a page on bowhunting, and if you’ll scroll to the bottom, you’ll find two files with different deer snorts. http://tinyurl.com/h5mfg
By the way, my wife just came in and read your post and thinks it’s hilarious that you got huffed by a buck while on the right trail.