Corner-crossing public land users have had their legal access rights repeatedly affirmed, and on Friday, the sheriff of the county where it all started was asked if state statute changes could help his deputies navigate the new legal landscape.  

Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken retorted that his officers are acting under the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision upholding corner crossing’s legality, while also being “very, very careful” to ensure that those public land users aren’t contacting or damaging private property. Current deputies are “fairly well versed in this issue,” he said. 

“As time progresses and new deputies [come on board] and this issue becomes more and more prevalent, I think more clarification would be beneficial,” Bakken told members of the Wyoming Legislature’s Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee gathered in Dubois. 

Minutes later, the panel of Wyoming senators and representatives voted in a show of hands to prepare language addressing law enforcement’s desire for more legal clarity. 

Corner crossing is defined as stepping from one piece of public land to another where the landscape consists of a checkerboard-like pattern with alternating public and private ownership. Corner crossers needn’t touch kitty-corner pieces of private ground, but they necessarily pass through the airspace above it.

The proposition of a bill further cementing the public’s right to access 3 million acres in Wyoming was not without its controversy. 

“This issue is not settled at the federal level,” Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation lobbyist Brett Moline testified in Dubois. “Until it is settled, I don’t think there’s much that we can do.”

Moline’s remark alluded to the prospect that the Supreme Court of the United States might take on the corner-crossing case. That’s considered unlikely — several people said in the meeting. Nevertheless, it’s being sought by lawyers for Fred Eshelman, the wealthy North Carolina pharmaceutical executive who owns Elk Mountain Ranch in Carbon County. Checkerboarded public land next to and throughout the ranch was the site of the showdown that so far has affirmed the public’s right to access that public land. 

Wyoming Stock Growers Association lobbyist Jim Magagna also urged lawmakers to wait on SCOTUS before tinkering with state statute. 

“If it is heard by the Supreme Court and upheld, then I think where we will be coming to the Legislature and need your assistance … would be in defining the parameters of it,” Magagna said. “There’s going to be so many things that would need to be addressed from a Wyoming perspective.” 

The longtime lobbyist threw out some suppositions: Could someone invent a ladder that could accommodate a side-by-side or even a pickup truck that could enable motorized corner crossing? 

But other parties encouraged action, translating the 10th Circuit’s decision into clear-cut Wyoming law. 

“Is this complicated? Wildly,” Wyoming Backcountry Hunters and Anglers lobbyist Sabrina King said. “Do we probably need clarification at some point that says, ‘Corner crossing, if you don’t touch the surface of the private land, is not a crime.’ That would be helpful.”

“It’s wild that we have to lay out in statute that not committing a crime is not committing a crime,” she added, “but with the complication of this issue, that may be necessary.” 

Efforts to amend Wyoming law to recognize the federal courts’ corner-crossing decisions have so far fallen short. Democrat Rep. Karlee Provenza, of Laramie, ran a bill during the Legislature’s 2025 general session — prior to the 10th Circuit’s decision — but it went nowhere after being held in the drawer by Republican Speaker of the House Chip Neiman, a Hulett rancher. 

Five months later, Provenza is working with legislative staff on the language of a bill that might gain support of the Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee, of which she’s a member. 

“It’s a whole lot easier to point to a statute in the green book than it is to say, ‘Here’s this however-many-page court document that tells us that we can do this, this and this,’” Provenza told WyoFile. “If we have it in our state statute, it’s just a lot clearer for law enforcement on the ground. It reduces disputes between law enforcement and landowners who are potentially  trying to [prevent] sportsmen from being able to hunt on their public land.” 

The Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee meets next on Aug. 19 in Casper.

Biologist Ken Mills sensed a shrewdness and smarts in Wolf 840M, a gray male canine that lived longer than any of the other 1,500-plus Wyoming wolves that have been ID’d and tracked since the species was reintroduced to the state three decades ago. 

First captured and collared as a 1-year-old living west of Cody in the Ishawooa Pack in April 2012, Wolf 840M had a way of escaping detection and threats for the dozen-plus years that followed. 

“Super savvy wolf,” Mills said, summing up an animal that lived 13 years and a few months.

That’s longer than any research wolves from Yellowstone National Park or Minnesota have survived. Only one wild wolf on record — Idaho’s B7, the last animal introduced into the U.S. from Canada in 1995 — lived longer, making it to at least 13.75. 

Just two months after being caught in a trap on the east end of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Wolf 840M, like many young adults, boogied west toward the Tetons. His travels terminated along the mighty mountain range’s western slope, in a sliver of wolf habitat overlooking Teton Valley, Idaho. 

There, wolves share the landscape with traps: Wolf trapping is permitted on the west side of the Wyoming-Idaho state line, an invisible boundary that splits the territory used by Wolf 840M’s Chagrin River Pack. (Appreciative U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists let a local resident who reported the west slope Teton wolves name the pack. The person chose to name the pack after a Cleveland, Ohio river.)

“When he was collared, he was caught in a trap,” Mills said. “So he knew what traps were.” 

That learned experience and recognition of a life-threatening device — traps killed some of Wolf 840M’s packmates — might have extended his life, Mills said.

Mills learned from experience that Wolf 840M was equally adept at avoiding remote game cameras. 

“I’ve been running cameras up there since 2013, and I didn’t get photos of him for a decade, until 2022,” the longtime Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologist said. “I’d have parts of the pack coming through and he would not be there.”

The camera-trap sighting three years ago was a shocker. 

Wolf 840M’s first tracking collar died in 2017, five years after he was collared up the South Fork of the Shoshone as a yearling. So by 2022, he would have been 11, already well beyond the typical wolf’s lifespan.

The next winter in 2023, Mills’ contracted capture crew was flying and collaring wolves west of the Tetons when they came upon an animal moving unusually slowly. 

“When they were chasing him, he just kind of ambled on downhill,” Mills recalled. “When I got the [dead] collar back, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t believe he’s still alive.’” 

By this point, Wolf 840M was at least 12. Remote camera footage from around this time — his avoidance skills had evidently waned — showed that he moved around with an old dog’s gait. It wasn’t even a lope. 

“Very arthritic,” Mills said. 

It’s unclear if Wolf 840M fed himself on the deer and elk herd that dwells on the Tetons’ west slope in his twilight years, or if he relied on packmates. But Mills’ best guess is that his mate, Wolf 1309F, did the heavy lifting, providing for the pack. 

“Based on the capture crew’s observations from when they caught him, and the camera footage I have, I’m not sure he would have been able to be fast enough [to catch prey],” Mills said. 

The old wolf did still have some spunk, however. He bred 1309F in 2022 and 2023, siring litters at 11 and 12 years old. 

Best biologists can tell, Wolf 840M succumbed to old age. Wyoming Game and Fish’s contracted pilot picked up a mortality signal flying last July. Mills went to investigate the site and quickly found the carcass.

“The pilot was 9.5 yards off,” Mills said of the impressively accurate coordinates he trekked toward marking the remains. “She’s nuts.” 

By the time Mills got to him that summer, keeled over right next to a small spring, Wolf 840M’s remains were pretty well melted back into the ground in the west slope Teton territory, where he spent almost his entire life. 

That’s a pretty remarkable landscape for a wolf to exist at all, let alone to survive until 13 years and change. 

“They’re on the edge of a human-dominated landscape,” Mills said.

Wolf 1309F — Wolf 840M’s former mate — even sometimes crosses Teton Valley, Idaho, passing by towns like Victor and navigating subdivisions, a highway and the Teton River to access hunting grounds in the Big Hole Mountains. 

Mills repeated his earlier observation.

 “Super savvy wolves,” he said. “Most people don’t know they’re there.”