“The remaining 28% of locked public land tends to be located on the edge of larger units of public land, perhaps as a result of the purchase, sale and barter of land over the past 170 years,” onX wrote. There are over 8 million acres of public land in the West currently enclosed behind disputed corners. There`s also a civil lawsuit in federal court that could decide whether four hunters who crossed one of these disputed corners from one parcel of public land to another — span two corners of private land — harmed the private owner. “If you can`t trust people already, it`s hard to imagine the curve would be any different. If we could master enforcement, it would be much easier to talk about trying to open up more public access. It is such a bad situation that public and private lands are mixed in this chessboard format. I know there are huge amounts of acres that would open up if grade crossings were legalized. If the idea was that it would somehow spread people more, that would be a good thing. But we have to master the application of the law.
Because of the checkerboard pattern, the long sides of public sections are bordered by inaccessible private land, but the corners of these public lands often touch accessible public land. “Schaaf” believes that if he simply scales the corner posts and never puts his hunting boots on adjacent private property, he can enter the interior sections. You can only access adjacent Crown lands. It is a grey area of the law, but in general, the crossing is considered trespassing and discouraged. Because of this, Montana athletes are denied access to hundreds of acres of publicly owned land. Landowners argue that by crossing at the corner, you enter the airspace above private land. “Accordingly, the State of Wyoming may not prosecute Mr. Yeomans or any other person for criminal trespassing if Mr. Yeomans or any other person moves from one section of public land to another section of public land on a common corner with two sections of private land,” the motion reads. Nichols said onX created the corner transition report at the request of customers and organizations, not because of the Wyoming court case. The information was also shared with agencies such as the Forest Service and BLM after onX`s initial report, she added. If those agencies end up digitizing all of their easements, as both the Montana and Idaho agencies have done, onX would have an easier time assessing whether some of the packages are already open, Nichols said.
Point of Rocks Ranch has repeatedly accused Cherry of trespassing. Last year, Cherry was accused of entering the ranch by crossing a wedge between two parts of Forest Service land. A 2004 memo from the then director of the Wyoming Department of Game and Fish indicated that rangers were in a similar situation when they forwarded crossing reports to the local sheriff or district attorney. That same year, Wyoming`s attorney general wrote to Game and Fish`s director, noting that the hunter had been found not guilty of trespassing in a 2003 case. This decision, the attorney general`s office added, has “no binding effect on any court, not even on the judge himself.” As the wedge junction debate continues, hunters increasingly rely on accurate GPS apps like onX Hunt to navigate checkerboard areas of public and private lands. Some fighters get around the problem by paying for helicopters and small planes to pick them up and disembark. The number of acres closed varies greatly from state to state. At the lower end, Idaho has 57,000 acres. At the other end, Wyoming has 2.44 million acres, thanks to the route of the largest railroad concession in history, crossing the width of the state from east to west.
Nevada has 1.93 million acres closed, Arizona has 1.33 million acres and Montana has 871,000 acres. HB0103 would change this legal grey area used by counsel for the defendant and significantly change the way trespassing is defined with respect to grade crossings. Specifically, the bill would change the definition of hunter trespassing, which currently states that “no person may enter private property,” according to WyoFile. The amended wording would state that “no person shall enter or transit through private property without permission.” But this is where this question gets even more complicated. Because the land is round, some of the square-kilometer stretches of land surveyed in the 19th century don`t really touch the corner. Looking at a wide checkerboard strip stretching for miles on either side of a railroad track, it would be easy to assume that much of the locked land would be difficult to walk, even if the corners of the property didn`t get in the way. But 49% of enclosed acres are just one corner away from an accessible plot. The remaining 51% would require between two and 15 corner jumps if legally possible. If the Montana legislature passes House Bill 566, the “revision of the trespass private property notice” will have serious consequences. The bill directly mentions checkerboard countries and states, “A violator of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be liable to a fine of not less than $50 or not more than $500 or imprisonment in the county jail for a term not exceeding 6 months or both.” It is fair to say that when two public properties meet, whether at the corners or at the edges, the public should have access to them. Landowners may consider corner crossings illegal because the point in space where the land meets is tiny.
As soon as you cross this corner, you violate the airspace on private property. This airspace has been defined as private by decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, within 500 to 1,000 feet above the ground, depending on the circumstances. However, this has become more opaque following Federal Aviation Administration decisions on the use of drones and navigable public airspace. “At every point where four squares meet, there is a corner of property ripe for controversy,” onX wrote in the introduction to its report. “With the corner topic coming back into the news, we decided to use our strengths and analyze the data.” For some public land hunters and access advocates, the solution may seem simple: legalize all crossings across the country and allow Americans access to every acre of their public land, including those enclosed between private parcels. After all, what harm could you do by stepping over private land to access public land? Don`t get me wrong, I`m a big believer in private property rights, but cross-corners need to be checked. The information provided here does not constitute legal advice and may not represent the most current information. Links to third party websites are provided for the convenience of the reader and do not endorse any third-party information.
“Swandel`s opinion was that he would not continue. It was not an intrusion to cross this endless corner from one public section to another. When we pointed out to the district attorney that this was the rule before she got involved, before she was elected, they dropped the charges,” Knuchel said. The crossing debate and the ongoing civil lawsuit against the four Missouri fighters have certainly spawned hardliners on both sides. But even after the dust settles on Iron Bar Holdings LLC vs. Case et al., public land hunters and private landowners still have to live together. That`s why it`s important that public access advocates like Tawney, public land managers like Stone-Manning, private landowners and public land hunters continue to balance and compromise wherever possible. Shortly after the Wyoming Attorney General`s statement, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) sent a memo to law enforcement, wildlife regulators, and the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, stating, “Simply crossing the corner of private property to reach public land does not meet the requirement” of being convicted under Wyoming law. which makes it illegal.
to hunt private property without authorization. This appears to be a win for access, but the memo also states, “Unfortunately, game and fish remain able to forward `corner pass` reports to the local sheriff`s office or county attorney.” Finally, the memo warns: “. Hunters may have the idea that it is now legal to cross corners to access previously inaccessible public lands. “Could this set a precedent? It`s possible,” David Willms, a legal expert from Wyoming, told MeatEater writer Sam Lungren in a recent article. “It is possible that there will be a decision that says the crossings are legal or illegal. It is also possible that the decision is much closer. The judge may dismiss the landowner`s claim for other reasons. It`s so hard to predict because there are so many possible outcomes. His lawyer, Karl Knuchel, says that because Cherry has crossed the gap between the two corners continuously for at least five years, without the permission of the landowner and without hiding it, he can continue to use this part of private property. Over the past two centuries, legislation, coincidences, and various land deals have resulted in 27,120 corners of property in the west, where two parcels of public land meet on either side of a point, with private land side by side, effectively in between. Beyond these corners are 8.3 million hectares of federal and state land inaccessible to the public because the legality of the corner passage remains uncertain.