Even before the jury verdict arrived, Eshelman filed a civil trespassing lawsuit against the four hunters, arguing that they had violated his private property rights by entering the airspace above his land. That was not the end of the story, though, for Fred Eshelman, the South Carolina-based founder of a multi-billion-dollar prescription drug company who maintains that the BLM considered corner-crossing to be illegal when he purchased Elk Mountain Ranch in 2005. The ranch manager finally garnered traction with the local prosecuting attorney, who told the Carbon County sheriff to issue citations and directed the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to tell the hunters to leave and not enter the “corner-locked” public land in question again.Įlk Mountain Ranch’s prosecutor-assisted victory, though, was short-lived: In April 2022, a jury acquitted the four hunters of criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to six months in jail and a $750 fine. Undeterred, the manager next tried the local sheriff, again without the desired result. The department declined to intervene, arguing that the Wyoming attorney general had deemed corner-crossing like the Missouri hunters were attempting to be legal. The photo was included in legal filings associated with a civil trespassing case.Īfter the Elk Mountain Ranch manager’s initial deterrence proved unsuccessful, he called the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. The brass cap corner marker installed by surveyors is visible in this photo of a short fence erected by Elk Mountain Ranch to deter hunters and others from entering BLM land. They later reported that they encountered “an abhorrent amount of hunter harassment” from Elk Mountain Ranch employees, who swore at them, “stalked” them and scared off the game they were pursuing with an ATV. Neither the mapping app nor the ladder spared them from the ranch manager’s ire, which they’d first experienced when they hunted the south-central Wyoming area the year prior. One of the hunters also brought a lightweight, articulating ladder he’d built just for the occasion, so the hunters could cross from one corner of the Bureau of Land Management land to another - each open to the public - without stepping on the private property of the Elk Mountain Ranch. In anticipation of such difficulties, they’d brought a mapping app that displays property boundaries and the user’s location relative to them. The hunters knew, too, that the odds were decent that they’d encounter pushback from the manager of the Elk Mountain Ranch, even though they’d come to hunt the sections of public land intermixed in a checkerboard pattern with the 22,000-acre ranch. Three of them had hunted in the area the previous year, finding its high elevation, fir-dotted slopes and aspen groves ideal for elk and deer. The four hunters from Missouri had come prepared to Elk Mountain, Wyoming. This is the first installment of that series. In a three-part series, Montana Free Press will explore “corner-crossing” and what it might mean for public access in Montana. When four hunters used a specially constructed ladder to step from one corner of public land in southern Wyoming to another, the ripples from that decision were initially small but have since ignited an impassioned debate that could open - or unequivocally restrict - access to more than eight million acres of public land across the West. Thank you for supporting in-depth journalism in Montana. This quality reporting was made possible due in part to your contribution. Thank you for being a member of Montana Free Press.
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