My wife and I drew this some years back. It's a lot of fun, but has a very low hunter success rate. The applications are accepted the first of May, you can apply as an individual or as a group.
The island is about 8 miles long by 4 wide, encompassing about 11,500 acres of mixed sand dune, sawgrass marsh, pine uplands and oak hammock habitat. I don't think I've ever been in an area with this number of different habitats condensed into such a small area.
The island is totally undeveloped - if you want to see a beach that looks just like it did when the Spanish got here, St. Vincent is the place. You must bring every thing you need- food, water, ice, etc. , because there are no facilities on the island.
There is a ferry at the western end of the island, but the area you must camp in is at the eastern end, 8 miles away. You'll need a guide or a boat. The boat should be a 20' or better, high sided, offshore style vessel. Have at least three good anchors and plenty of rope, as the anchorage is very exposed to the strong northeastern winds prevalent in early December. Making the trip across Apalachicola Bay is not a big deal, even in a small bass boat, but if you have to stay up all night tending your boat in the surf, you'll not be at your best the next morning. (Don't ask me how I know this.
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You walk or ride a bicycle everywhere, but if you kill something, you and your game get a ride back to camp from the biologists and wardens who run the hunt.
After walking about 4 miles in to the interior in sugar sand, carrying our stands, I looked at my wife and said, "Somethings gonna die today!". Later in the day , after we had given up on the Sambar, we stalked up a herd of wild hogs we had seen earlier in the day, and I whacked an old sow behind the ear with a .50 cal maxi-ball, drug her out to the nearest road, flagged down a passing FWC officer and rode in style back to camp!
They seemed more excited about the hog than about the 7 Sambar that were killed. It seems the hogs like sea turtle eggs, but few people wanted mess up their Sambar hunt to take one out.
