Can you hunt and fish in GTA 6? Leonida's 170 animals, where they live, and how hunting and fishing could work

Short answer: Rockstar says yes to both, but it has not shown you how either one plays. Its own description of Mount Kalaga National Park lists hunting, fishing and off-road trails as the things people go there to do, and Game Informer's September cover story, written with Rockstar's cooperation, describes a Leonida with more than 170 animal species, some of them sorted into rare, discoverable and legendary tiers that players can track. That is the language of a hunting system. What Rockstar has not done is show a rifle being raised at a deer, a rod being cast, a carcass or a catch being sold, or a menu that says "hunting" or "fishing". Everything in the first half of this story is confirmed. Everything in the second half is us reading the screenshots, and it is marked as such.

The number that changes things

GTA V shipped with about 28 animals, and most players remember three of them: the deer that ran into the road, the mountain lion that killed Trevor, and the dog. Leonida has over 170, across land, air and sea, and several are species that have never appeared in a Rockstar game. The breakdown reported alongside that figure is roughly 60 kinds of bird, more than 30 land mammals, and a long tail of fish and reptiles.

Two details in that story matter more than the number. The first is that animals get a new fur system for their coats and pelts, which is a word you do not spend engineering time on unless pelts are something the player handles. The second is the tiering: ordinary animals, then rare ones, then discoverable and legendary ones whose identities Rockstar is keeping secret, with tracking built in for some. Red Dead Redemption 2 players will recognise every piece of that sentence.

Every animal Rockstar has shown

Here is the list as it stands, with where each one appeared. Rockstar has named a few more than it has pictured.

• American alligator. The star. Lying on an airboat deck in the Grassrivers screenshots, swimming beside the chase in another, wandering into a convenience store in the first trailer, and leaping from the water on the cover art.
• White-tailed deer. Drinking at a watering hole in Mount Kalaga, splashing through Grassrivers shallows, and in one newer shot being watched from an ATV by a man with a rifle.
• A big cat. Prowling past those deer at the watering hole. Rockstar has not named it; it looks like a Florida panther, which is the only big cat that belongs in the state.
• Green iguana. Sunning on rocks in the Keys, crossing a street in front of a woman on a mobility scooter, and in two pieces of Rockstar artwork.
• Dolphins, surfacing beside a boat in the Ultimate Edition shots, and a sea turtle swimming past scuba divers on a Keys reef.
• Birds: pelicans over the Keys, gulls on boat rails, and roseate spoonbills, cranes and wood storks wading in Grassrivers.
• Dogs, including one on a waterfall hike, and two breeds in the screenshots so far.
• Named but not pictured: manatees and flamingos, both Rockstar's own examples of Leonida natives, and three invasive species: cane toads, feral cats and rhesus macaque monkeys. Florida really does have wild monkeys, and if they are in the game it is because someone at Rockstar read about them and could not resist.

Where the wild parts of the map are

The animals are not scattered evenly. Four regions do most of the work, and they are the four to learn if you want to find anything on day one. The map guide has all six.

Mount Kalaga National Park is the forest. Pine and hardwood highlands at the northern edge of the state, with a mountain in it, kayak rivers, a canyon trail and the dirt-bike and ATV routes from the trailers. Rockstar's blurb for it is the one that uses the word hunting, and the watering-hole screenshot with the deer and the cat is from here. It is also where the paranoid locals and the off-grid cabins live, so expect the two things to mix. The Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga story covers the region.

Grassrivers is the swamp, Rockstar's Everglades. Sawgrass to the horizon, airboats as a vehicle class, and alligators in every third screenshot. The wading birds live here, the deer come through the shallows, and the airboat chase shot has a gator watching from the water a few feet from the action. If there is a place in Leonida where the wildlife is a hazard rather than scenery, this is it.

The Leonida Keys are the reef. Iguanas on the rocks and in the road, pelicans overhead, sea turtles and dolphins below, and the scuba diving that Rockstar has already confirmed as an activity. Whatever "legendary" means underwater, it lives here.

Vice City and the coast have the dolphins and gulls, the manatees if Rockstar puts them where Florida keeps them, which is the warm canals, and the odd gator in a backyard pool.

How hunting could work: our reading

From here on this is interpretation, not fact. Rockstar could still ship animals purely as atmosphere. But the evidence points one way, so here is the version we think is most likely, built from what the screenshots and the preview language suggest and from how Rockstar built the same thing in Red Dead Redemption 2.

A tracking layer, not a hunting mode. The preview talks about animals you can track, and the man-on-the-ATV screenshot shows a scoped rifle, not a dedicated hunting weapon. The simplest reading is that any gun works, that rarer animals leave signs you can follow, and that the game rewards patience with the discoverable and legendary tiers. That is Red Dead's model stripped of its cores and camps, and it fits a GTA that has already shown a criminal-profile system quietly tracking what you do.

Pelts and carcasses have a buyer. The fur system is built for pelts, and Rockstar has already described Shore Court, the pre-order bonus garage, as having a fence for stolen goods. A hunting economy needs somewhere to sell, and a state full of back-country traders, bait shops and Grassrivers locals is the obvious place. Expect legendary pelts to be worth more than the gun you used.

Alligators are the enemy type. In Grassrivers the gators are too frequent and too close to the action to be decoration. Our guess is that they behave the way RDR2's did: ignore them and they ignore you, mostly, but fall in the water or wander the bank at night and they come for you. The convenience-store gator in trailer one is a joke; the one in the airboat chase is a warning.

The wildlife reacts to you. This is the part we feel most sure about, because the screenshots keep staging it: the deer drinking while a panther walks past, the iguana ignoring a scooter, the gator lying under two men who are not looking at it. A hundred and seventy species only earn their keep if they behave, and Rockstar has had seven years since Red Dead to improve the behaviour it already had.

Fishing: the calmer half, and the one we are more sure of

Fishing has a better paper trail than hunting. Rockstar's Mount Kalaga blurb names it outright, the species count sets aside room for fish, and the confirmed activity list is full of ways to be on the water: kayaks on Kalaga rivers, airboats and docks in Grassrivers, boats off the Keys, and scuba diving over the reef. Rockstar has not shown anyone holding a rod, so the mechanics are a guess, but the setting is not. Leonida is Florida, and Florida is the fishing capital of the country.

Here is how we think it breaks down, water by water.

• Kalaga rivers and lakes. Freshwater from a kayak or a bank: bass, catfish and gar if Rockstar follows the real state. The kayak screenshot under the bridge is exactly the shot a fishing minigame would open on.
• Grassrivers. Brackish swamp water, fished from a dock or an airboat, with the alligators deciding how long you stay. This is where the strange catches would live.
• The Keys. The reef and the flats: tarpon, snook, snapper and whatever "legendary" means with fins on it. Boat fishing, and the scuba footage suggests Rockstar has already built the water you would be fishing over.
• Vice City. Pier and canal fishing between missions, the way GTA V's golf and tennis sat between its heists.

Two guesses about how it plays. First, it will be simple: GTA has never shipped a fiddly minigame, and Red Dead Redemption 2's cast, wait, reel and fight loop is the obvious template, probably with less waiting. Second, catches will sell through the same back-country economy as pelts, with the rare and legendary fish worth a trip. And the boats are already accounted for: the Ultimate Edition hands you a Crest Kayak and a Shitzu Squalo speedboat on day one, which covers the Kalaga rivers and the Keys before you have earned a dollar. The Ultimate Edition breakdown has the full list.

What fishing will not be, if it follows Rockstar's pattern, is mandatory. It will be the thing you do at dawn in a kayak on a Kalaga river because the game made that river worth sitting in.

What would change our mind

If the third trailer, or the reviews in November, show animals only as background with no tracking, no pelts, no rod and no vendor, then hunting in GTA 6 means shooting a deer because it was there, fishing means watching the water, and the words in Rockstar's blurb were flavour text. We will update this story either way. Until then, learn the four regions above, and keep an eye on the water.

See all six regions on the map guide