The law is clear. If you want to act outside the law, that's your choice.

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications...nnedy_faq.phtml

Q: Some landowners in my county have deeds to the riverbed. Can they exclude the public from their part of the river?

A: Not if the river is navigable. The policy of the government of Texas, expressed in statute since the days of the Republic, has been to retain the beds of navigable streams as public property.13 However, the state surveyors did not always adhere to this law, and some land grants purported to include the beds of navigable streams. To remedy this situation, in a 1929 law known as the Small Bill, the state relinquished to the adjoining landowners certain property rights in the beds of some navigable streams. However, this statute declared that it did not impair the rights of the general public and the state in the waters of the streams.14 So even if a landowner's deed includes the bed of a navigable stream, and taxes are being paid on the bed, the public retains its right to use it as a navigable stream.

It is a fairly common myth that a person boating along a "Small Bill" stream may not set foot on the streambed if the landowner forbids it. This is based on the notion that a person who steps into the streambed has entered onto private property within the meaning of the criminal trespass law.15 This may have some applicability when the waters of a stream leave its banks and a boater navigates out of the streambed and steps onto the adjacent private lands, or on coastal land when tide waters cover private property. But the general public has the right to walk within the boundaries of any navigable streambed, even if there are private ownership rights under the Small Bill.1

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications...nnedy_faq.phtml

Link don't work.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with this link but i have asked the Game Warden what is considered trespassing when it concerns creeks....the State claims the water in them....he told me that if somebody steps on dry land on your property it is considered trespassing....i guess the creeks here are not deemed navigable , most of the times they don't run water and when they do it's usually in a flood stage

what is your point, you posted a bunch of stuff about this already

how does this have anything to do with saving land?

If you are posting this thinking you can walk or float a stream onto private property and hunt you are sadly mistaken. You could possible get away with floating in and fishing if you never leave your boat but it is not legal to hunt.

Sorry about the link, I should have checked to see if it worked.
The doc is on this page under: Q: Some landowners in my county have deeds to the riverbed. Can they exclude the public from their part of the river?

click here

You might want to read all the rules before you go hunting in any stream, dry or full.

The reason I'm posting this is most Game Wardens and people I've spoken with don't know the law and that has caused problems for me, some of my friends and a lot of people from fishermen to hunters and kayakers. There is a lot of misinformation (feelings/thoughts) out there. The law and the TPWD rules are clear that ALL "navigable rivers" belong to the state and therefore the public. The term "navigable" does not have anything to do with water, beds, season or anything else EXCEPT, is it an "average of 30ft. wide bank to bank, or more, from the mouth to any specific location. Most land owners surveys stop at the river and start again on the other side. But more and more the surveyors are shooting them across the river. By law (statute and legal precedence) it doesn't matter. The ownership and "right of way" still belongs to the public. If you'll read far enough even the TPWD's own rules and guidelines say that it is a "class B" misdemeanor to "interfere or obstruct" anyone trying to use this land for any reasonable purpose. The stream as opposed to the property, is termed from first bank to first bank (first drop off of the surface land). The land owner has a right to use the stream with restrictions just like everyone else, but just like a FM road which his deed shows he owns to the middle of, he can't restrict anyone from traveling it. We in the city own our property to the street and have to pay taxes on the sqaure ft.
But we can't tear the side walk up or build anything permanent on it.
You have to do quite a bit of reading to understand all of the nuances, but it's worth it to prevent trespassing or harming land owners. It is always important to know all the rules and to notify anyone in the area that you are hunting there including the Game Warden before you go.
These laws and ownership of streams goes back before the Republic and as far as I can find have never been changed and could only be changed by the legislature. They have repeatedly been upheld, strengthened and clarified regularly. Good luck. Hope this helps if you hunt public lands.
Most of all be safe!

Saving the use of it for the public, like state parks, wildlife reserves, national monuments etc...
We have less public land than most states and it's being taken fraudulently, regularly for "eminent domain" and other purposes that are not in the public's interest but some private company or org.
Thanks for the reply.

This thread has serious potential.

What are the fraudulent ways that are being used to take land regularly? Are you offering any sort of solution?

Overall, what's your point?

Try to solve this in court! The only winners will be the attorneys.

Mabe he is talking about duck hunting within the navigatable part of the river?

Okay, you have proclaimed the sky is falling with this repeat posting of the TPWD description of the law and you are making claims of fraud. Okay fine, now back up your claims. Just exactly what are these egregious cases of fraud that you are talking about. Be sure to include specific examples, citations, and document that this is as extensive as you claim.

Scratching my head......

X2

The first part of any solution is fact finding and research. I will get you a list of occurrences and dates, pretty biz right now. Forcing people out of their lifelong homes and neighbor hood in Arlington TX to build a football stadium is one of the worst I've ever seen. Lots of other paces the stadium could have been built. One of the largest I remember reading about is when the feds took peoples property along the Rio Grande, and across the SW, then built a fence blocking many Ranchers from using the water there for the livestock, and dozing a wide path of vegetation so they could drive up and down the border.
I'll get back to you when I have more time. Thanks

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

PARIS, Tex. — The Canadian energy company TransCanada can take over land owned by a Texas farmer to build its Keystone XL pipeline, a county judge ruled on Wednesday night. In a 15-word ruling sent from his iPhone, Judge Bill Harris of Lamar County Court at Law upheld TransCanada’s condemnation of a 50-foot strip of land across Julia Trigg Crawford’s pasture here. The pipeline is being built to carry oil to Texas refineries from Canada.

Ms. Crawford plans to appeal the ruling. “We may have lost this one battle here in Paris, Texas, but we are far from done,” she said in a statement. “I will continue to proudly stand up for my own personal rights, the property rights of my family, and those of other Texans fighting to protect their land.”

The case has shed light on a loophole in Texas’s oil and gas regulation — one that critics say has given pipeline companies carte blanche to seize private land. Activists across the political spectrum have rallied behind Ms. Crawford’s cause, from conservative rural landowners and Tea Party organizations to environmental groups.

At issue was whether TransCanada is a common carrier — a company with pipeline open to any oil company willing to pay published rates. In Texas, a common carrier has the power to condemn land with little oversight.

The problem, Ms. Crawford’s supporters say, is that to earn the designation, an oil company need only claim the status itself on a one-page form submitted to the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates pipelines.

That process has already been challenged successfully in the State Supreme Court. “No notice is given to affected parties,” Justice Don R. Willett wrote in that case, Texas Rice Land Partners v. Denbury Green. “No hearing is held, no evidence is presented, no investigation is conducted.”


Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/us/tex...eystone-xl.html

In a hunting forum you have gone from rivers and streams to streets and sidewalks and property lines to football stadiums to Federal boarder fence to pipeline easements (quoted from a three month old New York Times article to boot).
My question to you is; What is your point?

Haven't read through all the post but I suspect the OP focuses on those who duck hunt.

Sorry for the delay in responding. super biz this weekend.
This topic was started in a reply to a post by someone asking about public lands for the purpose of deer hunting. I stated that it was legal to hunt in the rivers and someone else posted that that would be trespassing, and away we went. My POINT in all of this is Texas has very little public land for deer hunting especially.
I don't know about you guys but I can't afford these 1000, $1500 leases. I have been hunting rivers and public land most of my life but have run into a lot of resistance in the last few years from people who don't understand why I think I can "just get in your car and come out here and go down in that river and hunt?" "where are you from boy?"-you know what I mean?
The title of the post means that if we don't stand up to people that want to limit where we can hunt we will be forced to pay exorbitant prices for leases or worse yet canned hunts, that's all.
Not trying to rant or anything, just trying to inform fellow hunters of a trend I believe I see and spread a little knowledge about what I've found in the law. If you don't want read about it there's plenty of other topics.
Always be safe.

You couldn't have picked a worse example to make you point.

I'm not sure this guy is interpreting the law correctly either

We had some guys from DFW up in the SW Panhandle who would hunt out of the Pease River; walking up and down it, shooting deer, turkey, etc... off the banks. They would camp right in the middle of the river (not much water in it nowadays) and strike out from there on foot. To my knowlege, the GM's in that area staked them out, gathered a bunch of evidence as they were accessing private property from the river and then finally busted them when they started using 4 wheelers to run up and down the river and collect their game. I believe these guys got hammered with everyting except jail, including losing everything they had at their camp and losing their hunting privelages for life. The problem with hunting from a river or stream is that nearly all of them runs thru private property and nearly everyone that hunts them will not or does not stay within the so called boundries of the river or stream. This is in my opinion, just an excuse to hunt someone elses private property under the guise of legally hunting from State or Federal property.