Appeals court sides with corner-crossing hunters in Wyoming dispute

A federal three-judge panel has sided with a group of hunters who faced civil trespassing charges stemming from elk-hunting excursions into “checkerboard” land in Carbon County, Wyoming.

The hunters in question crossed from one Bureau of Land Management section to another on multiple occasions in 2020 and 2021. In the process, they raised the ire of Fred Eshelman, a pharmaceutical executive whose Elk Mountain Ranch holdings span 50 miles of southeastern Wyoming, much of it in areas where public and private land is interspersed in a checkerboard pattern. 

After failing to secure criminal trespassing verdicts against the four hunters from Missouri, Eshelman brought civil trespassing charges, arguing that his property would shed an estimated $9 million in value if he lost exclusive access to the elk-rich public land sections interspersed with the square-mile sections of land for which he holds the deed.