“A lawyer from Ozark, Mo., Harry Styron, has researched extensively the topic of property rights along streams and rivers.
“These cases are really very confusing. They are difficult to interpret,” Styron said. “You are on private property, but you have a right to be there if it’s a navigable stream and as long as you are on a gravel bar that is submerged during parts of the year, because it’s part of the stream bed.”
The property issues can be hard to sort out, he said. But either way, he said, “it obviously doesn’t have anything to do with people shooting people. We don’t have a stand-your-gravel-bar law yet.”
I have chosen not to purchase a piece of property for all these very reasons. It has a clear stream that is used all summer for floating. I don’t want a steady stream of people going across my pasture. It is just a problem looking for a place to happen. This does not mean I don’t think anyone else should own such a property just not me.
Lets see a tuber stops at the gravel bar in the middle of the stream then walks off unto a private land owners property to take a dump. The land owner who is armed confronts the drunk party of tubers, one of the drunks tries to grab the land owner & gets shot for being stupid is that the basic premise of this story ?
If so there is a lesson here RESPECT THE LAND OWNER & DON’T TRY TO WRESTLE AN ARMED LAND OWNER. Hope this has been a useful teachable moment.