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I know that it stopped a while back and I hear its affected the hunting over around buzzard the last few years.
Not as easy to poach anymore with low water either .

The dredging of the Yazoo and Tallahatchie Rivers has certainly had an effect on the number of flood events the last decade. While one situated along the flood plain of these rivers (upper Delta) could expect water to be out of their banks for a prolonged period of time 3-4 out of every 10 years, it now looks to be a once a decade event. Certainly river water (Coldwater and Tallahatchie) does not effect many days during duck season at this time in comparison of the way fllod water did in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but rivers have been dredged before and the same scenarios will return again at some point. Most sediment and erosion that fills these rivers is within the stream erosion so I am told, meaning one can expect the rivers to once again become silted regardless of the ag practices and conservation practices going on around them. The rivers fill themselves with silt just from the rivers cutting into banks and dropping sediment in other spots.

SWAG wrote:The dredging of the Yazoo and Tallahatchie Rivers has certainly had an effect on the number of flood events the last decade. While one situated along the flood plain of these rivers (upper Delta) could expect water to be out of their banks for a prolonged period of time 3-4 out of every 10 years, it now looks to be a once a decade event. Certainly river water (Coldwater and Tallahatchie) does not effect many days during duck season at this time in comparison of the way fllod water did in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but rivers have been dredged before and the same scenarios will return again at some point. Most sediment and erosion that fills these rivers is within the stream erosion so I am told, meaning one can expect the rivers to once again become silted regardless of the ag practices and conservation practices going on around them. The rivers fill themselves with silt just from the rivers cutting into banks and dropping sediment in other spots.

I haven't seen the research to support that but there is plenty of documentaries that show they were a lot cleaner than today. Our farming practices are deplorable.

peewee wrote:Our farming practices are deplorable.

Specific instance or just ag in general? Do elaborate.

Did not say that farming practices did not contribute to the muddy water or sediment fill, nor that conservation practices would stop it all, just stating that most of the sediment fill within a river system is sediment that is moved and placed/moved and placed/moved and placed within the channel and banks itself. Not a hydrologist but know some good ones and they tell me the rivers will again be silted in regardless of the farming and conservation going on outside of the banks. I do not know enough to question them and I do tend to believe what they say.

As far as our farming practices being deplorable, you can visit my farm anytime. Not perfect by any means but before having to fill last fall's ruts this spring I had some fields that had not been tilled since 1994. Thats 20 years. While I am no hydrologist I am an observer of my surroundings and can tell you the creeks and streams around home clear up much quicker today than they did 25 years ago after a rain. The Mississippi was muddy when Desota saw it and there was no agriculture in the Midwest or Delta to make it that way then....so where was that silt coming from?

Love to hear the explanation of deplorable practices also.

Mud feeds my family.

peewee wrote:Our farming practices are deplorable.

family farm??

Anyhoooooooooooooooooooo. so poaching buzzard is harder now that the Upper Yazoo Project has come up the river(UYP).
The UYP project is dead for now until funding is restored .

Well, I agree with Pewee, while not all farms are contributing as much to the system as others, as a whole, our farming practices are a MAJOR contributor ro excess sedimentation, ask DanP, he will tell you, ut he will also tell you we, as a whole, are probably doing better today than yesterday. As someone who gets to look at alot of different farms and project sites and work on dredging projects and excess silt in old sloughs, rivers lakes, etc... I can tell you where it comes from...the adjacent fields. These two pictures I took two weeks ago in Bolivar county. I am standing on a turn road looking each way, to the field you can see the erosion adn looking at the Bayou you can see where the erosion has ended up. Is this practice contributing to the excess sedimentation problems of the old sloughs and oxbow lakes the Delta is experiencing....you bet it is. I can show you numerous requests that have com across my desk from folks in teh Delta wanting to dredge out an old lake or something cause it is too shallow and the old men tell me they used to swim in them, or jump off this bridge or whatever, and now it is a few inches deep.

Not all farmers are as big a contributor as others, but as a whole I say, farming is the number one contributer of excess sediment entering the waterways

I doubt anyone is advocating that ag does not contribute to sediment loads. I just think its counter productive to lead off a comment or discussion with a blanket statement that doesn't account for a lot aspects of the topic. There are a lot if folks working to improve this issue.

Once you become so risk averse that any problem is unacceptable at any level irregardless of the facts(all of them) then you hinder the ability to rationally work on/solve said problems.

novacaine wrote:Anyhoooooooooooooooooooo. so poaching buzzard is harder now that the Upper Yazoo Project has come up the river(UYP).
The UYP project is dead for now until funding is restored .

Yes I think that is what Float 40 was saying, no access by means of flood water. Still plenty of ducks harvested in Buzzard area, maybe just not as many by poaching

Poaching has such a negative conotation surrounding it. Is it illegal to get in there with high water or not? Asking for a friend of course.

deltadukman wrote:Poaching has such a negative conotation surrounding it. Is it illegal to get in there with high water or not? Asking for a friend of course.

Legal-smegal........................i know a guy that can get you access..............on the downlow of course.