DuckSouth.com

I heard there were 25 game wardens working the Tallahatchie River saturday writing tickets for trespassing left and right. Does anybody know the law on where is legal and not legal on these rivers. I think the old law that if you can get to it by boat, you can hunt it is out.

Let's ask Judge JB to re-post that link to the wildlife offenders report. I wonder how long it would take for these recent tickets to make this report?

Thanks.

Saw three federal boys Saturday am south of 32hwy. On the Tallahatchie River if you go out of the banks you are tresspassing.

I seem to recall that if you are over the high water mark, you are trespassing. I would have to look for the statute, but it is the one on public waterways, and check ALL the AG opinions that intrerpret it and its predecessors.

CG.... we wouldn't know attorneyspeak if we read it.... that's why we need good fella's like you - maybe you can give us something asy to understand. for us, reading that lawyer language is about as fun as memorizing a mutual fund prospectus or trying to figure out what a democrat means when he answers a question.

seems like the boys in jaxn could come up with an easier-to-understand rule on whether you iz or ain't in the wrong when hunting from a pirogue.

RULE IS " WATER DOESNT CHANGE A POSTED AREA", POSTED IS POSTED, WATER OR NOT.

well I was over there a couple of times, was fun just to see all the ducks but I just tried hunting the river, thought it might freeze a little harder than it did and maybe we could shoot some in some slower water, well we shot a few, not many.. and saw a few people taking there boats out into fields, but I don't think it takes a lawyer to figure out that if you are motoring your boat through someone's bean field and hunting it that you are trespassing, now the mississippi river may be a little harder to interpret in terms of what is 'normal' water level etc, but I'd have to say its pretty obvious on the Tallahatchie..

On a different subject, did ya'll see that dead yellow lab at the boat ramp the 16-17th? The collar looked to be cut-off so I hope the owner was notified. Is there more to that story??

sure is a lot more to that story....

The more part being that the poor little pup is no longer with us...

Don't know whether he jumped out of truck/stolen/etc.....

More than likely, there was probably something that could have prevented it...

A friend of mine got checked by the feds Sunday. They told him they had caught two guys in Tallahatchie County with 86 ducks. They also told him there is a max fine of $2500 per duck over the limit. I imagine those guys will be paying on that for a long time. They also said they had followed the ducks from up north and they were just now getting here and that the duck numbers were a lot lower than the USFWS and DU were reporting.

I found that website JB posted a while back:

http://www.mswildlife.org/citations.html

I didn't think game wardens were concerned with writing tickets for tresspassing unless the land owner requested it. Shouldn't the game wardens be concerned with catching hunters over the limit, lead shot, shooting after sunset, etc?

It amazes me that people who hunt the river would tresspass and then act like they were "following the river." Anyone who hunted the Tallahatchie last weekend knew that it was down from previous weeks and there were hardly any areas where a boat was navicable.

I had some river hunters who poched on a field this past weekend. They said they came in from the river. BS! I guess thats why they had to push and pick up their boat when we asked them to leave.

About three weeks ago I spoke with the area manger at O'Keefe WMA, just NW of the Tallahatchie River and Hwy32, he and some Fed boys had been working the river then. At that time this is were a good concentration of birds were at, so thats where they were focused. At that time they were checking limits mainly, said they were finding some folks busting their limits. He told me then to hunt the river, but to be wary of where I was as far as property lines go. His best advice is if its posted when its dry, its posted when its wet. Does matter if its dry or 6 feet under water, its posted. He said they were getting compliants then about tresspassing and said him and the Feds may be back if the complaints continued. Guess folks couldn't mind their manners.

The website listed earlier with violators is pretty good. Some folks just don't learn their lessons.

Ironically enough, there are not many violations in Tallahatchie County according to that site....

Here is the deal on water and public access:

The old law was that if you put your boat in a public waterbody and did not get out of the boat, you could hunt anywhere the boat would go...As such, I am many others were able to hunt Bozeman's Field off Highway 49 near Flora and many other places back in the 70s and 80s...

In the early 1990s, the folks at Tara Wildlife started making serious money off hunting but they had a problem...The MS River would flood their islands (then called Newman Towhead and Henderson Island, now called Willow Point North and South by the Tara folks) and they would have to share their duck hunting with us regular folks...So they got Howard Miller and a little $$$ together and had the MS Legislature change the law...

I find it very interesting that for the purposes of putting in a casino in Tunica County, the navigable waterway is wherever the floodwater fo the MS River floats the barge in the spring but for duck hunting the navigable waterway is only the regular channel of the river....Under current law, if your boat leaves the channel you are trespassing, whether the land is posted or not...

HAMMER