Well, it looks like that corner-crossing dispute in Wyoming is headed to court, at least this latest, civil action.
WyoFile, an online news site covering the state, reports that the two sides have set their witness lists, and a June 26 trial date has been set.
This federal trespass case is a civil matter. Fred Eshelman, owner of Elk Mountain Ranch, is suing four hunters who used ladders, GPS devices and survey pins to cross the corners where sections of private ranch and public property meet.
Eshelmen claims the four hunters trespassed by striding over the corners despite never touching ground on Elk Mountain Ranch property. He wants the hunters to pay him more than $9 million in damages for the harm the hunters caused.
That seems a pretty steep price for the damage caused by hunting public land not on your private property. They must have really shot up the place to push damages into the stratosphere like this.
Of course, this has nothing to do with any damage the hunters caused to Eshelman’s property. The damage they caused was actually to Eshelman’s claim to exclusive use of the public land that is on the other side of the property line from what he owns.
This case is potentially an important one. Corner-crossing law remains unsettled, and this case could have lasting impact on how corner crossings are treated in the West, a region riddled with checkerboard land ownership patterns that date to the 1800s when we gifted land to the railroad companies along either side of the rail lines they build across the continent.
The harm to Eshelman doesn’t have anything to do with actual damage to his property. His lawsuit is about the damage to him if he loses his perceived right to exclusive use of the public land next to his ranch. That’s what the lawsuit is about: Eshelman stands to lose a great deal if the riffraff is allowed to step over his corner pins and do things like hunt on public land without asking permission from adjacent lawn owners.
The hunters have already been found not guilty by a jury in a Carbon County courthouse a year ago.
But the assault on public property rights of hunters, anglers and outdoor recreationists in the West is relentless. Folks with way too much money on their hands waste it on frivolous things like suing people for being public-land hunters and anglers.
One of the witnesses is a pilot who flew into these same public lands and claims he was then harassed by the Elk Mountain Ranch gang while hunting on public land. They then resorted to scaring away the game the flying hunters were pursuing.
You’d think an old-school state like Wyoming would have laws to prevent antis from pulling these kinds of stunts around hunters legally hunting game. If so, they should be charged. Hunters have firearms. Getting between hunters and the game they are pursuing is unethical and dangerous.
Sadly, this is the state we are in. He who holds the keys to gated and locked backcountry roads, or claims a hunter violated their property rights by being in the air space above their property, litigates.
Access to remote places has become one of the West’s most valuable commodities and that’s attracting surplus wealth which seems to think they — landowners — should say who can and cannot use their own property, as well as any public land that adjoins it.
Flying into landlocked sections of public land is a thing. Hunters have long flown into public land inside the Wilks brothers’ NBar Ranch in the Durfee Hills near Lewiston. The brothers have been trying to trade those parcels for land near the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, to no avail.
So we public landowners ask: at what elevation does crossing the airspace above private property no longer entail a trespass?