Working Ranch Magazine Summer 2025

hunters explained they had merely corner-crossed. The hunters com pleted their hunting trip and returned home without further incident.” In 2021, the hunters returned to Elk Mountain, bringing a steel A-frame ladder to avoid touching Iron Bar’s signposts.“Iron Bar’s staff proved much more inhospitable this time around,” the opinion notes. “The property manager and another employee confronted the hunters multiple times. They also interfered with the hunter’s activities by driving motorized vehicles across public par cels to scare game away. As in 2020, there is no evidence the hunters made physical contact with or damaged Iron Bar’s property.” The manager contacted local law enforcement, but no action was taken. So the manager contacted the local prosecuting attorney’s office, which agreed to prosecute the hunters for criminal trespass. The hunters went to a jury trial and were acquitted. That same day, Iron Bar served the hunters with a lawsuit for civil tres pass, alleging $9 million in damages owing to the alleged diminution of its property value, according to the opin ion. Upon summary judgment, the district court denied Iron Bar’s posi tion and granted the hunters’ motion. Iron Bar appealed, and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decided to uphold the lower court’s ruling in favor of the hunters. The 10th Circuit Court’s opinion detailed many of the significant legal battles connected with the lower court ruling, including the Unlawful Inclosures Act (UIA) of 1885. “In essence, the UIA was designed to harmonize public access to the public domain with adjacent private land holdings,” according to the circuit court opinion. “Whatever the UIA’s merits today, it — and the case law interpreting it — remain good federal law. (Bergen, 848 F.2d at 1506.) Applying that law here, Iron Bar cannot implement a program which has the effect of ‘deny[ing] access to [federal] public lands for lawful purposes[.]’ So the district court was correct to hold that the hunters could corner-cross as long as they did not physically touch Iron Bar’s land,” the circuit opinion states.

CARBONCOUNTYWY.GOV

THE TANGLED WEB OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

public going across on 4-wheelers and tearing up the country as well as legally entering the public land, then ignoring unfenced boundaries with adjacent private lands,” he adds. “It’s important to think of this not in terms of just the legal right to step across a corner, but what the implica tions are for land and ranch manage ment. The issue from a private land owner perspective is bigger than the fact that they traverse through his airspace on a corner.” To read the 10th Circuit Court opinion, go to https://www.ca10. uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/files/opin ions/010111205718.pdf. For district court cases, go to PACER and register. https://pcl.uscourts.gov/ pcl/index.jsf District Court case: Iron Bar Holdings, LLC v. Cape, 674 F. Supp. 3d 1059, 1064 (D. Wyo. 2023) SUMMER 2025 I 65

“The way the decision (by the dis trict court) was issued, it’s limited to Wyoming,” according to Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA). “In Wyoming, the public can access public lands by corner-cross ing so long as they do it without physically touching private land and without doing any damage,” he says. WSGA filed a brief as part of the district court trial. The brief didn’t advocate for or against either side but addressed the larger issue of private property rights in a public land state. “If someone steps across the corner to get onto public land and behaves, that’s one thing,” Magagna says. “But what landlords have experi enced in this checkerboard area is sportsmen and other members of the