July
Buck Moon
July is when male deer are well into growing a new set of antlers, still sheathed in velvet. Antlers are shed and regrown every year — they are bone, not horn, and among the fastest-growing tissue any mammal produces, adding as much as a couple of centimetres a day at peak.
Where the name comes from
Thunder Moon, the other common name for July, is about the afternoon storms that define the month in much of eastern North America. Both names describe the same weeks accurately, which is a reminder that these lists are collections of regional observations rather than a single calendar anybody kept.
Also called Thunder Moon, Hay Moon.
Old Farmer's Almanac; antler growth rates from wildlife biology literature