As corner crossing opens 3M acres to public, advocates urge caution

FROM WYOFILE:

Disappointed ranchers ponder potential ‘conditions’ on newfound access to public lands.

As access advocates celebrated a court decision guaranteeing access to 3 million acres of public land in Wyoming and five other states, they asked for caution, common sense and respect when corner crossing.

Hunters, hikers and others who corner cross need to understand the entirety of the recent decision by the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, parties in the dispute said this week. A voice for ranchers said cattlemen were disappointed in the ruling. Jim Magagna raised the prospect of Wyoming still imposing “conditions” on corner crossing to ensure all uses of public land are “compatible.”

Corner crossing is the act of stepping from one piece of public land to another in the checkerboard landscape of public/private ownership. Corner crossers do not set foot on the kitty-corner pieces of private land but necessarily pass through the airspace above it.

The March 18 appeals court decision affects access to 3 million acres in 10th Circuit states — Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma, according to onX, the digital mapping company that’s been a key player in the five-year legal drama.

Western ranching custom and culture treated corner crossing as a trespass; a prosecutor in Carbon County brought the practice’s legality to a head in 2022 by citing four hunters for corner crossing to hunt public land on Elk Mountain. The 10th circuit said it is illegal to block access in such cases, meaning the public can reach its checkerboard land without fear of being convicted of trespassing.

“I didn’t go cheer,” said Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. “There’s real concern,” he said, citing potential for trespassing and conflicts between hikers or hunters and herds of stock.

Buzz Hettick, co-chair of Wyoming Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, saw less worry. “There’s more work in the future to educate landowners and [the public] on how we go about this in the right way,” he said. His group spearheaded the hunters’ defense in criminal and civil court cases.

16 feet

The digital mapping company onX uses GPS satellites combined with public land records to show cellphone app users their location in the field. With the app, public land users can locate property boundaries with a measured degree of accuracy.

In the Carbon County case, four Missouri hunters used the app to approach a surveyed monument at a common checkerboard corner. Once they sighted it, they were able to pass over the corner without touching private land.

All of those details, and more, are important, onX said on its website. The 10th Circuit ruling relied on an 1885 law that guaranteed access where “access to public lands is otherwise restricted,” the company states.

“This ruling indicates that if there’s another public route into a parcel of public land, the corner may not offer a short cut or alternative access point,” onX cautions. The company states that it is not giving legal advice and says the particular alternative-access issue “is not clarified” by the appeals court.

Most GPS systems are accurate to only about 16 feet, but corner crossing is “a game of inches,” the company says. “You need to have absolute certainty about the location of the legal corner.

“Don’t cross unless you can find a physical survey marker, usually called a ‘pin’ or ‘monument,’” onX states. Corner monuments need to be “survey-grade.” Although almost all of the Western land boundaries in question have been surveyed, not all of the corner monuments are easy to see or locate, and some may have been removed by one force or another.

Magagna, Hettick and onX agree that fences may not be exactly on property boundaries, so hikers and hunters must be aware of that. It is a hunter’s responsibility, Hettick said, to know where she or he is.

Finally, it’s possible a local sheriff could cite a corner crosser for trespassing. Although the federal court case would likely nullify that citation, “unfortunately, that would only happen when the case got to court,” onX said.

Fence lines

“We may have to live with this,” Magagna said of the six-state decision. However, he noted, Elk Mountain Ranch owner Fred Eshelman, the Carbon County landowner who sued Missouri hunters Brad Cape, John Slowensky and Phillip Yeomans and Zach Smith in civil court, could ask the entire 10th Circuit Court to review the case. He could also ask the Supreme Court of the United States to take up an appeal.

“I think there’s real concern … issues,” Magagna said. “All these fence lines and corners are not correct.”

What can a hiker or hunter do, he asked, on public land where there’s a herd of cattle or sheep?

Ranchers wonder, “are there conditions I can place on [public access] to make it compatible with other uses?” he said. The court decision “opens some opportunity to us to do something different in Wyoming.”

What that “something different” might be and whether it blocks access in a way the 10th Circuit said would be illegal is uncertain. But the court appeared to conclude that any blockage, threats, intimidation, fences and Wyoming trespass laws cannot be used against corner crossers.

Right now, the Wyoming Legislature has proposed taking up the issue as a study topic before the next legislative session begins at the start of 2026. The Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee has proposed corner crossing as its fourth-priority topic.

Discussion would begin with the 2025 House Bill 99, “Access to public lands-corner crossing,” according to the proposed study topic. That measure would have made corner crossing legal under Wyoming law, but it never saw debate during the session and died.

Badass chapter

Conservationists hailed the 10th Circuit decision. Green Latinos, Western Watersheds Project, Earthjustice and Sierra Club Outdoors for All Campaign all issued statements applauding the decision.

“This case was about a multi-millionaire trying to prevent access to public lands so he could have it for himself,” Earthjustice said. The ruling “facilitates wildlife management, supports ecological research, and deepens people’s connection with the landscape,” Western Watersheds said.

Backcountry Hunters and Anglers “and our badass Wyoming Chapter” led the charge for the favorable corner-crossing decision, said Patrick Berry, president & CEO of the nationwide Backcountry Hunters and Anglers group. “BHA chapters helped raise over $200,000 for the legal defense of the hunters,” he said in a statement.

“The fundraising was a big deal,” Wyoming chapter co-chair Hettick said. MeatEater television and podcast host Steven Rinella offered his platforms for fundraising, Hettick said. Others helped, including access advocate Jeff Muratore, who wrangled attorneys for the hunters’ defense, Hettick said.

“Of all the conservation organizations out there, it was BHA and MeatEater that stepped up to the plate,” Hettick said. “It was one core group of guys willing to put themselves out there for access.”

“It was something that needed clarity,” he said. “I think it’s a good thing that [the 10th Circuit] did take their time and get it right.”

Although disagreeable, the decision that corner crossers “stay in the air” and not touch any property is far better than a ruling that would have said someone can actually set foot on private land, Magagna said. “It was rather narrow,” he said of the decision.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

This story was posted on March 27, 2025.