No gettin, either way. Very deprssing really. I did learn a bit though. The zone I applied for, because I assumed that I wouldn't get drawn has no lakes or impoundments, just ponds, creeks and a couple rivers. Since we are YEARS into a major drought and up until yesterday it hadn't rained at all in 25 days. This meant that the water was extremely low everywhere and I only found two places where I could get my boat into the water and it was no easy deal at either one of those. It was apparent that the rivers were out, they were so shallow and had so many exposed logs that it was nearly impossible to travel them in the daytime, let alone at night and the one trip I did take, I didn't see any gators at all and all of the creek entrances and marshy areas off the river were dry or impassible. The one lake I had high hopes for I saw nothing and then talked to a local and he said they went there at the beginning of the season and there had been about 20 gators in that lake. He also said he had lines out baited with whole chickens(set lines are illegal). All of the ponds are on private property and NOBODY wants big gators in their fishing or swimming ponds, I thought that might make it easy to find a place to help someone out, but apparently there are LOTS of volunteers, as everyone that I talked to for a while starting talking about all the gators they shot or at least left no doubt that they had no gators in their pond ANYMORE. I did finally get into one private pond the last night and the water was very low, but I did see about a dozen gators although they were mostly little. Several about three feet long that I could have caught by hand(I really wanted to, but I didn't want to make a commotion). One that may have been almost legal(48") and one I think was about five feet, which is still pretty small and even at that he was so spooky I doubt I could have got a shot, the only decent look I got at him was just his head, they have a way of floating with their head at the surface and their body hanging almost straight down into the dark water and they just backslide out of sight very quickly. I was pretty disappointed in the whole thing. If I do decide to apply again and wait the years to get enough points, I'll apply for a zone with large lakes or impoundments, I think they are less likely to be poached out and you could stay out there all night if necessary, the places I could go, after an hour or so I had seen everything there was to see.