October
Hunter’s Moon
Bare, harvested fields revealed the game; the time of the hunt.
Upcoming full moons
- Monday, October 26, 20264:11 AM
- Friday, October 15, 20271:46 PM
- Tuesday, October 3, 20284:24 PM
Times are in Universal Time (UTC) until your time zone is detected.
Also called
Falling Leaves Moon · Blood Moon (old Europe)
Origin of the name
After the harvest, the bare fields hid nothing. The game, fattened on summer’s gleanings, could be seen from afar. Like its September sister, the hunter’s moon rises early and for several evenings running, light enough to lengthen the chase. Old Europe called it more bluntly the blood moon: the month for slaughtering the beasts one could not feed through winter.
The story goes…
It was said that October was the moon of stores. Smoking, salting, laying down in barrels. Everything done under this moon aimed at the same thing: getting through winter.
The almanac’s word
Low on the horizon, the hunter’s moon often looks enormous and orange. It is an optical illusion, and no one has yet entirely explained it.