In the game
Rockstar pitches Mount Kalaga National Park as country for hunting and camping, and Trailer 2 has flashes of it: trucks on dirt roads through pine woods, people dressed for the woods rather than the beach. It feels closer to Georgia than Miami. Fans matched it to the hunt camp culture of the Panhandle, where much of the land is national forest, state forest or timber lease, and deer season is a season the way Christmas is.
The match is cultural rather than a single place. Rockstar has not shown a named camp or forest, so this is likely at best. If you want to see the world the trailer borrows from, the Apalachicola National Forest is the biggest, easiest version of it.
The real place
Apalachicola National Forest is Florida’s largest at roughly 570,000 acres, running from the edge of Tallahassee south and west toward the Gulf. It is longleaf pine and wiregrass on the high ground, titi swamp and cypress in the low, and holes in the middle: Leon Sinks, near the northern edge, is a chain of sinkholes and disappearing streams with a boardwalk trail. Further in, the Bradwell Bay Wilderness is a swamp so wet the trail through it is waist-deep for part of the year.
Hunting is woven in. The forest is a wildlife management area, and from fall into winter the forest roads fill with trucks, dogs and orange vests. Hunt camps, from a tarp and a cooler to a cabin with a generator, sit down every side road. Sopchoppy, on the southern edge, is the little town people pass through on the way to them. The detail a GTA fan will recognize is the road: red clay and sand, pines on both sides, a truck with a dog box parked at the end.
Go there
From Tallahassee, take SR 20 west or SR 373 south and pick a forest road. The Apalachee Savannahs Scenic Byway (SR 65 and CR 12) is the drive to do, through wide pitcher-plant savannahs that bloom in spring. Stop at Leon Sinks for the boardwalk loop, about an hour. Dispersed camping is free across most of the forest; developed sites cost little.
If you want to hunt, you need a Florida license, a wildlife management area permit and the right season; non-resident fees run to a few hundred dollars, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission site has current dates and rules. Most travelers will just want to see it. Come on a fall weekend and you will.
Food is in Tallahassee, Crawfordville or Sopchoppy; the forest has none. Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park, on the forest’s eastern edge, is the famous side trip, with a spring the size of a stadium and a 1930s lodge that serves lunch.
The honest warning: in season, wear bright colors on any trail, stay on marked roads, and do not walk into camps uninvited; people are armed. Out of season the hazards are heat, ticks and getting lost, because the roads all look the same.
Nearby
- Torreya and Britton Hill: where Florida gets hills: an hour west, the closest Florida gets to a mount.
- Ocala National Forest: the pine forest: the other big forest, three hours southeast, with the swimmable springs.
Updated September 12, 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us.