Stock growers pan Wyoming’s corner-crossing bill as hunters vow: “You don’t get to rewrite our win”

The original story by Angus M. Thuermer Jr. for WyoFile.

Wyoming’s long fight over “corner crossing” — that hopscotch move where public-land users step from one federal parcel to another at a shared corner without setting foot on private ground — just spilled back into the Capitol. A draft bill that would write last summer’s federal court ruling into state law is headed to the Legislature, but ranching interests say they want no part of it, and hunters aren’t about to let them narrow the victory they dragged through five courts.

The proposal, blandly titled “Corner crossing clarification,” aims to mirror the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals’ 49-page decision in the Elk Mountain case. That ruling said landowners can’t use their property rights to block the public from reaching public land in checkerboarded country simply by claiming the airspace at the corners. Carbon County ranch owner and pharmaceutical magnate Fred Eshelman had sued four Missouri hunters for trespass after they used a fence-post ladder to cross a corner near his Elk Mountain Ranch; he lost, and the Supreme Court later declined to take the appeal.

Lawmakers on the Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee gave the bill a narrow green light in August. It would carve out an explicit exception in Wyoming trespass law so a person who corner-crosses “does not commit criminal trespass.” It also shields users whose bodies or gear make incidental, harmless contact with private property as they pivot across — a hair farther than the 10th Circuit went, which emphasized the hunters made no physical contact at all. Think of that add-on as a nod to the de minimis doctrine — no foul for trifles.

That’s where ranchers balk. Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, which backed Eshelman in court with friend-of-the-court briefs, said his group can’t support the draft. He called it “not a workable answer,” pointing to what he described as uncertainties over incidental contact, fears that people could string “bridges” for motorized corner hops, and a broader worry that opening up isolated public tracts will bring more trespass, poaching, litter, fire risk and accidents to the edges of working ranches. In his telling, it’s one thing if a couple of hunters slip across a fence corner; it’s another if a hundred people decide to turn it into an event. He floated the idea that landowners might offer alternative, less intrusive routes — along a ranch road or trail — to those public acres. If a private easement makes the parcel no longer “isolated,” he suggested, perhaps corner crossing wouldn’t be necessary or allowed there at all.

Hunters bristled at that. Buzz Hettick, co-chair of the Wyoming chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the group that bankrolled and shepherded the four Missourians through trial, appeal and the high court’s pass, said the corner itself is the point. In his view, after landowners spent years arguing to keep the public out, they don’t get to pick a different gate now. He said he won’t let opponents “dictate how we move forward on this,” adding that ranchers have enjoyed de facto exclusive use of public land for too long.

If the debate feels like déjà vu, that’s because Wyoming has been here before. An Albany County judge tossed a corner-crossing case back in 2004, prompting then-Attorney General Pat Crank to tell Game and Fish that while corner crossing might be a civil trespass issue, it wasn’t a hunting violation the agency could pursue. That gray zone kept the practice alive in some corners of the state. In 2022, a Rawlins jury acquitted the Elk Mountain hunters of misdemeanor criminal trespass in a separate case; a law review note later speculated jurors nullified what they saw as an unjust application of the law.

Even with the 10th Circuit’s ruling, sheriffs are reminding people the win isn’t carte blanche. After the Supreme Court refused Eshelman’s appeal, Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken wrote that his office will follow the appellate decision, which allows corner crossing, but trespassers away from the corners will “be charged accordingly.” He also flagged the ruling’s geography: it binds Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming — not the entire West. Montana, for instance, still considers corner crossing trespass, according to that state’s wildlife agency.

The stakes are big. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers says the 10th Circuit decision effectively opened up access to roughly 3.5 million acres in those six states, including about 2.4 million acres in Wyoming alone. Before the ruling, about 8.3 million acres across the West were “corner-locked,” practically reachable only by adjacent private landowners and their guests if corner crossing was treated as trespass. The group’s Jack Polentes called the court win historic, but warned that “powerful interests will continue to test the boundaries of public access in statehouses and courtrooms across the country.”

For now, the Wyoming bill advances without amendments, even as ranchers press to bolt on limits. The committee didn’t put it back on its November agenda, but when the full Legislature gavels in, the politics will be every bit as checkerboarded as the landscape. The August committee vote showed the split clearly. Republicans Brian Boner of Douglas, Larry Hicks of Baggs and Stacy Jones of Rock Springs joined GOP representatives Marilyn Connolly of Buffalo, Robert Wharff of Evanston and Pam Thayer of Riverton in opposition. Republicans Bill Landen of Casper, Wendy Schuler of Evanston, Andrew Byron of Jackson, Elissa Campbell of Casper and Steve Harshman of Casper voted yes, alongside Democrats Karlee Provenza of Laramie and Liz Storer of Jackson. Rep. Julie Jarvis, a Casper Republican, was excused.

Strip away the legalese, and the fight is about who gets to decide how the public reaches its own land. The courts have said a careful step over a survey pin is legal in Wyoming. Ranchers want guardrails. Hunters say the guardrails are already there — and they’re not moving the corner.