Hunters won a major decision for public land access in Wyoming recently, and the ripples will ultimately reach Arkansas.
In October, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Iron Bar Holdings, LLC v. Cape et al., preserving a unanimous decision by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals’ upholding the legality of “corner crossing.” The case involved a Wyoming landowner that pressed trespassing charges against four Missouri hunters who cut across the corner of the landowner’s fence to get from one public parcel to another.
Law enforcement has traditionally supported landowners in “corner crossing” situations. It is an effective method to restrict public access to public land that is surrounded by private land. By restricting corner crossing, landowners have exclusive access to public land abutting their property. They can hunt it without competition, and they can run guided hunts on it.
We have encountered that situation personally while hunting in Oklahoma. A situation in Arkansas occurred about a decade ago where a landowner closed a road on his property that leads to a remote portion of Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. There’s the ongoing conflict between public land hunters in northeast Arkansas and the Hatchie Coon Hunting Club.
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, which in 2021 successfully campaigned to prevent the University of Arkansas from selling the Pine Tree Experimental Station Wildlife Demonstration Area to private interests, filed amicus filings in the Wyoming case and raised funds for the hunters’ legal defense. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers said in a release that the 10th Circuit’s decision preserves access to more than 3.5 million acres of public lands in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma. Impact might also expand to about 8.3 million acres across the West.
“The Supreme Court’s action affirms a principle hunters and anglers have long understood: corner crossing is not a crime,” said Devin O’Dea, western policy and conservation manager for Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. “Access to 3.5 million acres of public lands has been secured because four hunters from Missouri took a leap of faith across a corner, and the Wyoming Chapter of BHA stood up in their defense. It’s a victory worth celebrating, and a key domino in the fight for public land access across the West.”
In a sense, the Iron Bar Holdings decision dovetails with Arkansas v. McIlroy, a landmark 1980 case that preserved and expanded public access to Arkansas streams and rivers with a creative interpretation of the term “navigable.” Before McIlroy, “navigable” referred to the farthest distance upstream that a steamboat could go in high water. Landowners on the Mulberry River strung barbed wire across the river. Sometimes they physically accosted paddlers. McIlroy extended navigability definition to canoes and kayaks, creating the paddling environment that so many people enjoy.
Missouri recognizes public access rights to paddlecraft navigable waters, but one still risks an adversarial encounter with territorial landowners on many streams in the state. My former boss Dan Witter and several other Missouri Department of Conservation employees were forced off a well-known river at gunpoint. As Witter told me at the time, the law was on their side, but a streamside encounter with an armed and angry landowner is not the time or place to debate it.
Some public parcels are entirely enclosed by private land. There is no access to those parcels, corner crossings or otherwise. I have a friend in Roger Mills County, Oklahoma, whose land enclosed a 160-acre public Bureau of Land Management parcel. I quipped that it would be worthwhile for a hunter to hire a helicopter to airlift him into the property.
Without cracking a hint of a smile, the landowner said a helicopter pilot would have to get permission to overfly his property, and that he would not grant it.
As people migrate away from cities and turn rural hamlets into suburbs, the demand for access to public land will intensify. The courts appear to sympathize with the public in access disputes, and the Iron Bar decision will ultimately factor into access disputes in Arkansas.
