The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 488: The Wyoming Corner Crossing Lawyer Finally Speaks Out

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Steven Rinella talks with Ryan Semerad, Ryan Callaghan, Janis Putelis, Brody Henderson, Randall Williams, and Phil Taylor.  Topics discussed: Political figures who pose as hunters; island biogeography and culling mule deer on Catalina; when you follow a girl to Wyoming; law doggin’; driving a turtle cross country to reunite with another turtle; when you thought checkerboard is where you play chess; philosophical, moral, and legal; the fence builder, his employee, the truck repairman, and the highschool band director; property lines as arbitrary and what people kill each other over; when the case went from state to federal court; "it looked elk-y"; can't touch the T-post; value of the property trespass; the irony of having exclusive access to public land; how you should maybe be mad at your real estate agent; not guilty on the criminal case; the conditions around airspace trespass; listening to supreme court arguments while you’re out on your morning jog; legal risk; physically identifying the stake; the wider implications; will this case go to the Supreme Court?; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater Merch  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-t-l-i-t-e.com beware the man who just hunts birds now except less less is tom mcguine i went on a pheasant hunt last year tom mcguine has that it's like I appreciate What Tom McGuane He wrote a real good

Essay on mule deer hunting a long Time that was a good But like when I get real Serious about walking for roosters Especially like late season Public land roosters You tell me who's the bigger hunter A dude who walks from their electric Vehicle to a tree stand to shoot a whitetail?

Listen, I'm not. Bill, turn the machine on. This is an argument worth having. The machine is on. Phil's machine is on. I'm, okay. Phil's machine is on. You missed something, but I'm going to try to explain where we're at on this, and then we're going to.

I think you should just let him make his statement. Just to titillate, just to titillate. We're joined by the most important lawyer in America right now. Ryan Semerand. Semerad. How do you like to say that? Semerad. Semerad. Most important lawyer in America right now. He told me just like

it's spelled. Some people think... Which always makes you feel good. But I was seeing an N in there. I don't know why. I've looked at it a thousand times. Some people think it's like, people think which always makes you feel good i was seeing an end in there i don't know why i've looked at a thousand times some people think it's like oh the most important lawyer in america right now must be uh i don't know rudy who's not even a lawyer anymore okay scratch him most important lawyer in america right now is the lawyer that's defending no no no it'd be like the lawyer that's defending um president trump in the in the in the in the georgia election i don't know i'm just trying just pulling straws here yeah some people might think that right they might think whatever lawyer

is going to litigate the next election in four and a half years. But there's no way that's going to be clear. There's no way everybody's just going to go like, yeah, figures don't lie. But no, it's this guy right here, Ryan Semret, in our studio. It's the most important lawyer in America. Why? Stay tuned. Back to what I said.

Back to what Cal said. Well, I wasn't dogging on okay we were having a conversation about when public figures when public figures in the conservation space public figures and manage wildlife management will want to be able to have their sort of hunting bona fides and then leverage those to attack hunting you will find that they often are i'm just i'm sorry they often are bird hunters because they feel that they can do that right that they They're hoping like, well, I hope this will buy me some street cred. I can identify as. But then I will still be able to go to the cocktail parties that I'd like to go to because I'm not that bloody. Yeah, because I don't chase lions with hounds.

Yeah. So it's like it's not dogging on it i'm not dogging i'm just saying i made a comment like beware the bird hunter i didn't mean beware bird hunters bird is great i think also clarified except tom mcguane because tom mcguane was a big game hunter and eventually became a bird hunter and when yanni and i interviewed him years ago on this show tom mcguane he said you know speaking of all hunting he's a hunter he said you know something to the effect of you know you are trying to kill things that want to stay alive can't ignore that right as if the birds don't want to stay alive well no

he wasn't even he wasn't like acting he was pointing this out about his own self. And he's saying, are we honestly going to ignore this? Can we talk about this for a minute? And he's a novelist. He can't ignore it. They're not allowed to ignore stuff. They have to talk about stuff. That's all I was saying. I wasn't hacking on bird hunters.

It was just that. There's another I could just name a handful of them. Oh, the super annoying wolf grizzly guy? Yeah, another one. Oh no, no, no. I'm a hunter. And I think, Bart, this is where I very much agree with you.

These people, it is very, very common. They do some fly angling and they own a breed of dog that is generally considered a bird dog that I believe just like fits the, the profile versus. Can you whisper it to me?

Cause I'm not sure. I mean, it. What does it rhyme with? There's a lot of. Whisper what it rhymes with Most of them are some dainty pointer Or possibly a small flusher Um But it

Why can't we say it A red bone Why can't we say the dog A big hound dog Why can't we say the dog Because he doesn't want to make a bunch of issues. He doesn't want people to feel attacked.

No, I don't. Well, it's not an attack on the dog. It's just that these people own that kind of dog. Well, no. Because they're good bird dogs. But there's several breeds though. Like we could go through all the red flags.

But I'm just saying that it's going to be considered a bird dog, but that dog would not be considered a bird dog when but that dog would not be considered a bird dog when compared to actual bird dogs. Because it's not, it's being used very casually, not very seriously. So that bird dog is a metaphor for that kind of hunter.

Yeah. Well. I'm joking. But there's a variety of breeds. I'm off. See, I've taken the beat and the table. I said, you, and then this is where the fun part started

for the audience. And I said, just, you know, keep in mind, late season rooster hunting when I'm getting real serious about birds with the dog. If you compare what I'm doing compared to,

let's call them a hardcore, badass, tree stand, white tail hunter. I don't think you could. It is box blind. It is white tail week, Cal. It is.

Not by the time this plays. That, you know, most circles would be like, well, this person is obviously working a little harder. Yep. But I'm not, again, i'm not talking about the discipline or practice of i'm talking about the politics of yes why did well no because this is a little bit different this is a little bit contradictory no that's a bird i don't know if it's still true

but historically a presidential candidate would want to establish their hunting bona fides yeah i believe this is true i believe hillary clinton even linked herself to past hunters she uh she famously told stories about going duck hunting growing up okay john carrey what did he do remember Remember him? Yep. John Kerry went on a goose hunt. Didn't get one. And he made a very strange, he made a very, he made a very strange, he did a strange move that, that backfired. He had a guy carry a shotgun. so someone was sort of like probably not best right to have a ton of photos of him with the shotgun right but instead you have a ton of photos of him looking like a country dandy yeah that's a typical with a guy carrying his gun like as though it's like his caddy

and so then it became lampooned but he still felt the need to establish his bona fides now you take this and look at where this mitt romney had the same situation mitt romney's like oh yeah i hunt someone says funny you're not in the database of people who had a hunt license. So then he had to be like, don't. And he's like, wow, I hunted varmints. I believe he said, I hunted varmints and such. Ooh, nice. And then you're like, I wish I had just never even brought this. I wish I had never even brought this up.

Yeah, the aides are scrambling. Like, oh boy no i think there's a there does exist a compilation of uh political figure uh photo ops like awkward gun handling photo ops out there and also like fishing awkward fishing you know it exists but the dude another quick thing before we get to the world's most important lawyer. In the moment. That's what I'm keeping it. You know, I don't want to get him. Yeah, exactly.

Well done. I don't want to get him too cocky. Most important lawyer in the moment. For the last collection of moments. How many years? About two. Oh, okay. Well, I've been a lawyer for seven.

But this case, about two. Yeah. We're going to get to that heavy duty. It's good that you're here. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yanni, can you just quickly finish this thought up? The dude that the governor of Colorado is married to, he's a very outspoken animal rights

activist. Very outspoken animal rights act very outspoken correct yes and there's i mean whatever call it rumors but there's definitely like people that say well the president that's dictating some president trump would put it this way a lot of people are saying a lot of people are saying that that's dictating policy towards hunting in Colorado. Well, I mean, there's no argument that shows, uh, an administration doesn't sway the state fishing game office. Sure. Like in most, most states that I'm aware of.

But his husband is not an elected official Well yeah but I mean I'm just saying Pillow talk Right You know when we do our live show in Denver Yanni Invite Polis

Should we invite him? No But I think that live show I think we might have to talk about this a little bit. I think that that live show should mostly be focused on this issue. I love it. You know, there are people, including myself to some degree, were kind of like when Polis was running. Like when he was a state representative, he was our state representative around bale for a while and he was very like

pro public lands did a lot to establish like he was doing stuff up at camp pale doing stuff for like getting wilderness areas designated um things you liked things i liked right but the hunting thing was like not even part of the part of the deal deal. So he was a good public lands advocate, but was not a hunting advocate. Yeah, but it wasn't like the hunting thing wasn't on the radar. Because back then Hickenlooper wasn't anti-hunting, like at least in any perceivable way. I mean, you hunted with him, I think, didn't you? No, I wouldn't. No, he definitely wasn't.

Oh, he was at the one shot deal way back when. He definitely, I mean, at great political risk to himself, he went to the one shot, meaning he went to the one shot in Wyoming and everyone, he knows everyone in the room hates him. And he knows that everyone back homes, everyone in the room hates him for his gun policy.

Everyone back home hates him that he's hunting antelope. And he was having the best time of anybody there. I said, I ain't did it with him. He was on cloud nine the whole time. People were coming saying awful stuff to him. He's just having the best time of his life. I was like, this guy's got balls, man. Yeah, and Polis was the first Colorado governor

that bailed out of that one shot no i couldn't believe man i couldn't believe the hick and loop or like how good of a time he was having in a situation that anybody else would be like there's no way in the world dude i'm gonna have my gun record and go to wyoming with a bunch of gun people and then have to come back home and everybody bitching me from the other side that I went down there with all them gun people. Hey man, that's a, you know, he's able to do both. That's a good politician, I guess. Yeah. You know, cause he came from the bar business. One thing you learn in the bar business is you learn how to sit in a hostile environment.

That's the truth. That's amazing. You learn how to be around people hostile environment. That's the truth. That's amazing. You learn how to be around people that don't think what you think. Yep. Also, the 2024 calendar is out. So if you purchased and loved fucked up old deer stands, fucked up old taxidermy,

we're taking a break from that run and it's called the dirty dozen this year but we'll get back to the old which is basically like fucked up old tv personality hunting tv yeah and then in 2025 i'm still thinking fucked up old fish cleaning stations but that's like hard i like that one but fucked up old fishing boats is good too dirtiest nastiest fish cleaning stations up old deer camps. Yeah. Send in your ideas.

I know some fish. I've talked to photographers on there. They're like, it's hard to capture a dirty fish cleaning station. The beauty of a dirty fish cleaning station. Well, it's hard to like, because you either got to focus in on the dirty, slimy parts, or you stand back. It's just hard to capture if you talk to a photographer about it. It might need to be a video, a calendar that is full of videos.

That's hard. Because there's different layers of scale. You should have slime and slime. Yeah, when they reach over there. The dilapidated structure. Have Seth provide a good example of the cleaning station at the fish shack and say, make a photo like this. I don't want to name the one.

But that fish station's not effed up. No, I don't want to name the one. I can't name the one that's in my mind right now because it would be impolitic to name the one that's on my mind right now. But it'd have to be scratch and sniff. It's like a scratch and sniff calendar all those ones with the grinder in the middle right like oh end of july you go oh yeah so you got hit in the face and the eyeballs and then someone is that someone throws a 15 pound channel cat carcass in there and just the grinder locks up and

everything. I don't know about this grinder business. Oh, they're a genius, but they don't accept big catfish heads. So it grinds everything. And this is a public? Oh yeah. You throw a bluegill in there, it doesn't even change tune. Oh, I threw in giant northern pike.

And where does it go? They use it for fertilizer? It goes into the septic, I'm guessing. Goes into the municipal. Wow, that's cool. There's a chum pipe out in every lake out there. Oh, yeah. I mean, grinds it, dude.

That's cool. No, it's genius. There's one, the first one I ran into was in my home state of Michigan. Not while I lived there, but when I visited there recently. But it's been, this thing's been around a while. They got them all over Montana. they all the way down the missouri must not be cleaning that many fish for walleye folks like yeah they're they got a hose my kids love growing that thing seeing all the fish coming in throwing those things in that ground i had a very diplomatic

situation one night this is a very quick story, but we were at this deal. We went out fishing with this guy. It was a very serious walleye guy. We get up to the fish cleaning station. There's two guides there. You can tell they're, you can just tell at what stage of their day they're in. I thought you were going to say what stage of the guiding career. The one where they want to be home.

And both, right? It's like, it's late. It was a really cold windy day out in missouri out in uh south dakota and i watch our guy who's just like this aggressive old football player type have no he doesn't even acknowledge that these other people exist at the cleaning station and so when he's grabbing the hose and hosing stuff off he's just i mean and you can see the temperature is rising yeah so i'm like backpedaling like a free safety steve uh and i get to the boat and i like dig out our pack of beer and like haul ass to the fish cleaning station. I'm like, Hey guys, you look like you had a

long day. Diplomacy. You can just see like the thermometer was like right at the very top and she just started coming down. It's just like, Oh my God. Uh, we're gonna do one news item. And this is, uh, this is one of those ones.

This is a story that never goes away. It just moves. Generally from Island. This is a story that never goes away. It just moves. Generally from island. This is a story that moves from island to island around America. Probably globally. Catalina Island Mule Deer versus Native Plants and Grasses. A plan to use helicopter-mounted sharpshooters to kill nearly 2,000 invasive mule deers roaming the mountains of Santa Catalina Island has ignited a storm of protests among residents of the popular resort destination. And prompted calls for state wildlife officials to block the hunts.

Now, I've been out there. I went out there because they have a... They shouldn't call it a hunt. They have a hunt. No, I know, but they shouldn't call it... I there because they have a. They shouldn't call it a hunt. They have a hunt. No, I know, but they shouldn't call it. I don't know why they're calling that a hunt. Yeah, it's eradication. Okay. So reason to say this just jumps from island to island around the country.

Islands being what they are. There's a whole discipline if you want to, if listeners want to get real serious about this, there's a whole discipline called island biogeography islands being what they are oftentimes um didn't get large you know they don't have large mammals on them birds find them right and then oftentimes little stuff finds them but a lot of times islands don't have full suites of large mammals and people being people they get out to an island and like damn this place be a lot better with a bunch of x and they turn it loose and then what they don't turn loose is coyotes and wolves and lions and pretty soon you have you know insane populations of ungulates

meaning what could be wild sheep could be omnivores like pigs. What am I missing? Axis deer. Well, elk. The funny thing is, is I had a buddy in college that was a wildlife and fishery science major. His first job out of college was on Catalina Island eradicating goats and pigs. Okay. And no, like they weren't complaining about that back then. Well, cause that ain't mule deer. I understand. But, um, he killed so many of those things.

He said it like after a couple of years, he was just like, he was a hunter and he was just like overwhelmed by the amount of death. Yeah. The dirtiest deed I've ever heard of when you're doing goat control on islands, you know, about the good, the Judas goat. I've heard. Yeah, man. Those guys, those sharpshooter dudes, they'll take a goat, right? And put a little tracking collar on them

and let them go. Be like, go find your buddies. And you wait a while and you just know that goat's going to find the other goats. You know what it is is they stole that idea from red dawn do you remember that kid's a great man red dawn that kid went into town he wasn't supposed to go into town the rooskies caught him and they made him swaddle that tracking device and then the rooskies came for him and they killed all the rooskies and then they had they got that

tracking device and he's like trying to And then they got that tracking device. And he's like trying to figure out who the tracking device leads him right to is their buddy. And he shoots him. That's where they got that idea for the Judas goat. Good mule deer hunting scene in that movie too. Oh, yeah. This brings it right back around to what I was talking about. This moves around all the time.

So you have islands and islands have just the same bio island bio biogeography that perhaps keeps you know grazers off allows islands to develop unique sweets of vegetation right sometimes unique sweets of vegetation that don't exist anywhere else on the planet but then you move grazers out there and and grazers you know graze down native vegetations they create a disturbed ecosystem you still have people running around they're introducing non-native weeds intentionally accidentally they're planting ornamentals whatever and then pretty soon you have this island that was full of endemic species meaning things found nowhere else or communities found nowhere else and then it kind of looks a lot like mainland meaning you know you got cheatgrass and mule deer whatever the hell it just you see this all the time so they're always debating this out like in the in hawaii you know there's a big thing in maui for instance tons of axis deer

a lot of people hunt them and love axis deer a lot of people are like they don't belong here they were brought by people they're destroying endemic species and it's just just this argument that floats around and never goes away and it's tricky one for me because i'm always you know like anybody i like to see um you know lots of animals to go hunting for and and like anyone i like to you know i like to preserve the planet's biodiversity so catalina island has mule deer and they have american buffalo or bison they have those because of they filmed a movie out there and brought them out there and they're still out there running around you know free ranging semi-wild but apparently now they're going to, they're, they're,

they're fixing to eliminate the mule deer right now. They're allowing, uh, right now they're allowing 200 of these deer to get a hundred a year. So you can get permits and hunt 200 deer a year, but they're looking just to put the kibosh on the whole thing and, um, use helicopters to kill all the deer. hundred deer a year, but they're looking just to put the kibosh on the whole thing and, um, use

helicopters to kill all the deer. And some people ain't happy. They make the hunt very complicated. They do? Yeah. I don't know anything about it. I've looked into it. I didn't even know that, I didn't know that it

existed. I looked into it, well, cause I had this dream of participating in the hunt while a lobster season was in, was happening. Right. So you could go hunt mule deer and then go dive for lobsters at night. Sounds pretty awesome.

Camp on a beach. I mean, you're getting the picture, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. Lovely. Yeah. It's an island, island oasis. Um, but the, yeah, the, there's, they heavily incentivize like the use of outfitters on the

island. It was just like overly complicated to get through just to get the information that you want to go out there and hunt. Are there toads out there? Uh, I, I have seen some nice sheds on people's shelves and stuff out there. Yeah.

Um, but I'm, I'm not sure if they're growing anything like real big. I'm, I'm sure it's pretty darn incest-y out there. Got it. Yeah. And I know there's also just, you know, there's not an overabundance of fresh water on the

island. Got it. Yeah. So. This is one of those ones, the island. Got it. Yeah. So. This is one of those ones, if I lived there, I'd be pissed. It is, it's, it's a thorny one. So think, think, come up with your own

decisions about that. Well, the bison are a tourist trap. Yeah. And people. That's why I went there when I was working on my Buffalo book, I went out there. Oh, that's wild. Um, and, and yeah, I mean the, the deer people

can, they are more available for people to go out and hunt, harvest and eat. It's no brainer to me. You can have your, your five bison out there and have your Jurassic Park experience and, and let people actually go hunt the mule deer. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe just increase the

tags so that so that the native uh flora can actually handle the pressure yeah that's why i'm wondering why is that not part of the conversation if you have 2000 and you're killing 10 a year why why not for a while kill 20 a year or 50 yeah or 50 and then and then and then see what the then see what the impact is. Well, they're not killing enough. That seems solvable. At what point are incremental. Let cattle get one.

Here's a guy that wants to get one. It is California. Like, do they really want to use hunting to solve their problem? It's anecdotal, but there used to be, I was told from a resident of Catalina, that it used to be you could only kill a buck if you killed a doe or possibly two does at one point. Earn a buck. Yeah. There's 150 bison.

Doug Dirt's perking up right now. Earn a buck. Is that all? That's what it says here. Which I think is probably a lot for, I mean, that thing is a desert rock out there. Yeah, so it seems like the 150 bison could be eating as much as those 2,000 mule deer. Yeah, it's some easy math to do. Hey, folks, exciting news

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onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. All right, Ryan Semerad, the corner crossing lawyer, the lawyer who is representing the Wyoming corner crossers that have just been in the news and we've spent endless amounts of time on this we had the four we had how many guys from missouri came out we had two we had some of the corner crossers from missouri come out they've

been on the show we've had analysts and other lawyers on the show to talk about this, but right now we're going to hear updates, insight, narratives, and explanations from the actual attorney who's in there duking it out in the courtrooms. Good to be here. Now, I'm so sick of explaining it. You explain it for a minute. Do a high level, do the high level explanation well introduce yourself to you yeah so my name is ryan samrad i'm an attorney live in casper where were you born born in upstate new york it's connected uh and uh in light of your long conversation about the politics of non-hunters and visuals'll tell you, I don't hunt at all. You don't hunt at all.

Not at all. Um, so just so you know, yeah. Um, never have hunted. It's like Corinne did no background research. You could probably do a, you could probably get some good invites to some hunting camps after this whole mess. Oh yeah. You're gonna have a lot of, oh yeah.

Well, that was my question. Have you had opportunities to hunt? Like have you dabbled or you just have never? No, I didn't grow up with it. Mom and dad weren't part of it. Family wasn't part of it. My uncle, I think, hunted a little bit. Where'd you go to law school?

Ohio State. Ah, go Buckeyes. So how'd you wind up in Wyoming? I believe it's the Ohio State. Yeah, you're supposed to say the, I think. So, came about a girl. My wife's born and raised in Casper. Oh, where'd you meet her?

At Ohio state. She's a lawyer too. You guys are law dogging all the time, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, uh, her and her firm assisted on the case. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. Um. No hunting. No hunting. No hunting at all. Yeah. Huh. All right.

Yeah. Uh, but. I'm actually glad. Yeah. So a lot of this stuff is just interesting to me i mean i don't know much about it but it's interesting hearing you guys talk about it um but uh what do you think about that island out there in california yeah what's your take well i mean you know eradicating from a helicopter seems a little ungamely unsportmanlike.

They're not after sportsmanship. Yeah, it seems like. They're after killing animals. It seems like it. But, yeah, I mean, I think we should let Cal go hunt a little bit. Well, that's an official legal perspective, right? That's a perspective. That's a perspective.

Problem is with these guys, you've got to pay a lot just for a letter. It says they recommend that. Yeah. Well, that's a free just for a letter that says they recommend that. Yeah. Well, that's a freebie for you. They call that pro bono. Well, yeah, so about this corner crossing thing. So I guess 50. No, no, no, I want to do a little more background.

Oh, yeah, sure, sure, sure. You meet, you're in law school. Yeah. You meet another law school yeah you meet another law school what do you guys call each other candidates classmates got it yeah randall here's got a phd he probably told you about that didn't he cal called him doctor right okay so you're in law school you meet your wife wife, she's in law school, and at some point she says, I would like to get back home to Wyoming. A few more stops along the way, actually.

So my first job was working for a law firm in Cleveland, and her first job was working for a law firm in Las Vegas. So I was flying to Vegas like every other week, it felt like, and I'm sure there were some questions at the office why Ryan's leaving all the time to go to Vegas and the airline thought you had a game every Friday there I was he's back um but now I was just going to visit her and uh wanted to we weren't even engaged at the time um but kind of knew she was the one. So I got a job lined up out there working with a judge so I could be out there starting in 2017. And funny, just funny story getting out there. I actually, my wildlife experience, here's my wildlife experience. You ready for it? There were friends we had in Vegas. They had two turtles, Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde was living in Ohio with their daughter,

and they asked me because they knew that I was moving to Vegas if I would mind transporting Clyde back to Bonnie. Oh, that's cute. So I drove. Was he all excited? I had him in a little plastic container, a little bit of water, and he was sitting in the passenger seat. It was just me and Clyde.

And you turned to him and be like, so what are you going to say when you see her? And he'd ask you the same thing. Yeah, that's right. That's like a bad buddy movie. Yeah, yeah. So we drove from Cleveland, and then our first stop was in Des Moines. And then we went from Des Moines to Frisco, Colorado. We broke down in Utah and had to stay.

I can't remember exactly where we were in Utah. I was driving a little Chevy Cruze I had. And coming through Frisco, one of my windshield wipers stopped working. So I had to kind of stick my head. It started to snow. It was in May, but it was snowing going up the mountains. You probably thought being a lawyer was supposed to be a lot different. A lot different than transporting a turtle.

I am. I am broke down with a turtle. Yeah. Hanging out in a Chevy Cruze to be a lot different. A lot different than transporting a turtle. I know, here I am. Here I am, broke down with a turtle. Hanging out in a Chevy van. This ain't lawyer. Yeah, so I broke down in Utah, and somebody came, gave me a lift, tow truck driver, and I'm sitting there, and now I'm in the tow truck with me and Clyde. And then, yeah, we stayed at a hotel for the night, got the car fixed up, back on my way, made it to Vegas, and reunited, Bonnie and Clyde. So I do.

My tow truck driver's like, let me tell you about people from Ohio. He's on another podcast right now talking about this guy with the turtle. He's like, and this son of a bitch gets out, and he's got a turtle. Yeah, that's right. And it's snowing. He claims to me that he's reuniting the turtle with the turtle's girl. True story. I got photos.

But yeah. So then I. So that's your wildlife background. That's my wildlife adventures. I transported a turtle across the country. But yeah. So then I was in Vegas. I was clerking for a judge there.

After I finished doing that, I worked for a firm called Holland and Hart. Did that for a couple of years. And then when my wife and I were planning to have a kid, we were like, well, we want to move back closer to some family. And so we decided to go back closer to her family in Casper. And we moved. It was like the first week of March 2020. Really interesting time in Casper. And we moved, it was like the first week of March, 2020, really interesting time in the world. Um, and yeah, we moved to Casper and I've been there ever since, but that's how- And you guys work at different firms.

Different firms. Yeah. She still works for the firms based in Vegas, her firm, and it has offices in California and Colorado. Um, and then my firm is basically me. So. What's it called? Fuller and Semerad. Who's Fuller? Uh, Don Fuller is my law partner. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. So now you can do one of two things. It's up to you. Sure. Lawyer's choice. You, uh, either explain how this, how this whole thing came to you or you explain what it is, but whatever order, both those things are going to need to happen, obviously. I'm just putting you in my shoes as an interviewer. Yeah, sure.

Like, I need to get that covered. I'll try to help you. I'll try to help you. Like, I can do it or you can do it. You know, I'll tell you how it came to me because that's probably the best way for me to explain it because, again, I don't know nothing about nothing. And checkerboard was, you know, it's where you played chess or checkers, I guess. That's, that's really, that's really all I knew about it. Um, so, uh, yeah, it was, uh, November, December of 21.

And I got a call from another attorney in town who said, Hey, hey, one of those corner hoppers needs another attorney. You want to do it? And I said to myself, what the fuck is corner hopping? What are you talking about? I mean, I didn't care. I'll take case. I mean, I don't know what that is, but sure. He seemed, there was a lot of implied in that statement.

Like I would know what that was and I he seemed there was a lot of implied in that statement like like i would know what that was and i'd be really yeah i was gonna ask like is that something lawyers in casper kind of don't want to touch well well no yeah why didn't he want it so no he he did he represented one of the hunters but so so so in a criminal case generally speaking you don't want to have one attorney representing multiple people because hey what if somebody wants to snitch? You know, it kind of puts you in a bad spot. Is that a word you guys use, snitch? We call it proffering.

A little stick with snitch. Yeah. In the business, you'd say, yeah, my client's interested in proffering. Gotcha. And that's the other side's kind of. So who is it? So if you have a gang of criminals, this is way off subject. Yeah, sure. Let's say you have a gang of just regular old

bank robbers. Sure. They know they don't want all one lawyer. Like who doesn't want them to all have one lawyer? Well, the state bar says that we're conflicted. If I have an interest. So it's not a defense strategy. It's just a practice that's generally. Kind of both ways because it does put you in a bad spot if you were to represent everybody, unless everybody's going to agree it's all for one, one for all, and we're not going to cross swords.

But it's really hard to put yourself in that position where you represent everybody. Yeah. Yeah. So I got this call mainly because there were four of them and you know, one, I think at that point, two of the four already had attorneys. And so I said, sure, I'll, I'll jump in on one of them though. I knew nothing about it. Not going to turn down business. Yeah. And it was a good friend of mine so i was like yeah absolutely i'll help for sure you guys had a rapport yeah yeah for sure for sure um so i jumped in and one of the first things i did is call i made you know i got friends in wyoming who hunt so you know i can talk to them about things and they they know quite a bit about some

stuff you're like yes r, the guy with the turtle. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Hey, I got, I got a, I got a question for you. So, so I, I call a buddy actually. Um, and I asked him, I was like, what, what is corner crossing? What is, what is, what am I looking at here?

And the way he kind of explained it to me is like kind of a little bigger than just corner crossing specifically, but, I want to go hunt over there. Are you okay with it? Or, hey, would you like me to help you out on the ranch a little bit in exchange if you'll let me go there? But there's been this big dramatic shift in kind of pay to play that, okay, you're either going to use our outfitter and pay for it to get there, or you're not going at all, or there's no communication whatsoever. And that's kind of the broader picture of just, it used to be, oh, I want to go over there because I'm going to go hunt or whatever it is I want to do. And that door has been closed.

And corner crossing is just like a subspecies of that whole problem. And it's, and it has more to do with this unique land pattern. Um, the check report, which is alternating public and private square mile chunks, you know, looks like a checkerboard. And where the public and public share a corner with the private and private, there's this philosophical, moral, legal question of whether or not a person can go from that public square to the other public square, that would be your corner cross. I like that you just put it as philosophical, moral, and legal. Yeah. I don't know the, okay.

I mean, I know the answer, but. Oh. Yeah. Well, what's the answer, Cal? Can you? Of course you can. You're just walking from public land to public land. Like, my issue, I don't know.

Philosophical, yes. Legal, yes. I just haven't found a, looking at it at both sides, I haven't found a moral component. Well, yeah, so I guess the way that I was. But I don't want to derail your story. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, when I think about this, access generally or property generally, I mean, first of all, by the way, I also did not like property law in law school. I thought it was really dry and I don't know.

And here you find yourself. Here I find myself with the hunters and the property law stuff. But what I say moral, I think property law is always going to be kind of a moral choice because it's both the most arbitrary kind of law we have because it's just imaginary lines drawn out in the world. But it's also the thing that, you know, we kill the most people over. I mean, wars are always about property. Yeah. And I've always been. And so when there's a question of, okay, can I cross this corner? Sure, there's legal and there's the philosophical side of what does it all mean? But from a moral perspective of, well, when it is ambiguous, or at least it used to be, or it's getting less ambiguous, but when it was ambiguous, am I doing something that is offending the private property owner in a fundamental way?

Am I harming them? Am I damaging them? Am I going to do that? Am I going to be that kind of person? Am I going to cross that Rubicon? And I think that that – and then with the whole criminal side, I mean the whole criminal – the difference between criminal and civil is supposed to be the criminal stuff is moral judgments. We make as a society and we're punishing you for it. Um, and civil is supposed to not have that necessarily,

necessarily that component to it. So that's kind of the way I looked at it. All right. You won. Yeah. That's interesting. It's moral, physical,

whatever. It's all that. Moral. Philosophical. And moral. You're right. Yeah. I give.

Um, it's like, he's a good lawyer. He's got a strong argument. Yeah. You should go into law. Yeah. Uh, well,'s like he's a good lawyer. He's got a strong argument. Yeah. He should go into law. Yeah. Well, yeah.

So you have that kind of basic situation. If you want to know more about the history of the checkerboard or whatever, I'm happy to tell you. is these three, originally two Missouri hunters were hunting elsewhere in Wyoming in 2019 and passed through Carbon County near Elk Mountain. And I have to say it because I just love the phrase and Phil Yeomans, my client in the criminal case said it in his deposition in the civil case. Yeah. Why, what attracted you about Elk Mountain, that area. And he said it in his deposition is great. Looked Elky. That's what he said. He said that.

And I, and, and we all. I'd like the court to know. It was Elky. Yeah. Established his faction. That's what he said. Objection, your honor. Yeah.

I found the bunch grass load to be. And, and so they just looked around, no one was there and thought it looked elky and they were like, well, how we got to figure this out. So they go home and they, they apply for a tag and it's, it's going to be at the, in 2020, it was Phil Yeomans, Brad Cape and Zach Smith, those three guys alone. And they went out and they hunted, uh, that area and they did some research beforehand and their research said to them, well, they've got to have access because there's some federal law and federal guidance out there that says you can't obstruct access to public land. You just can't do it. And so their perspective was, we can, we should, if you can't stop me, then I should be

able to do it. They get out there and they arrive at, in its corner, it's checkerboarded right in that area, right on Elk Mountain, right off Rattlesnake pass road is where they went section 14, section 24 is kind of the, that's the primary access point to the Southeast portion, uh, facing Southeast of, of elk mountain. And they approach the corner and at the very first corner, there are two T posts and they're about a foot away from each other. And the T posts. Did you know what a T-post was before this? Nope. No idea.

No idea what a T-post was. The answer is going to be no to most of this stuff. It's stuff that I've learned recently. Yeah, it's been an educational thing. Two T-posts. Two T-posts have no trespassing signs on them with a phone number and an elk mountain ranch. That's what it says.

And they're connected by chains and the chains are locked together so it's this kind of i always looked at it as kind of you get to the front door of a club and the bouncer has that velvet little rope that's kind of let you in let you not in that's kind of what it looked like to me that's how i always visualized it i was like that's just real weird that's just so strange out in the middle of nowhere because there's nothing else around it. And so they knew they had to get past that to keep hunting on public land. And so they each individually just grabbed onto the one tipos and swung their body from the one square of public land to the next square of public land without touching the private on either side and went on their business. Um, and then they used Onyx, their eyes and located the rest of the actual US

or GS, uh, survey stakes at each corner and just crossed over those corners to proceed onward, hunted, and it was a pretty successful hunt cause they're kind of by themselves, no one else out there. But, you know, trouble came knocking because the ranch manager found them. They were actually field dressing one of their elk. I think they only hunted elk that year. And we have an audio recording of it, actually. We got through discovery.

Did you have to say, can you explain field dress? Look, I'm using the term. I don't even think I still know what it is. So if it sounds clunky, that's cause I, yeah, it's like I'm speaking German for the first time. But yeah, so the, I, we have an audio recording of it and ranch manager approaches him and basically says like, what do you. Who made the audio recording? Zach Smith. Okay.

Yeah. Just cause he had a feeling like this wasn't going to be a. Smith. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Just because he had a feeling like this wasn't going to be a pleasant thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So.

When someone makes an audio recording, it usually carries with it, uh, that they feel they're in the right. And, and you can, it's pretty emphatic on, on the recording too, because they, they say just as much to, uh, it was Steve Grundy, the ranch manager for Elk Mountain Ranch, that, uh, they, everything they've read says that they're doing the right thing. And they explained to him exactly what they had been doing. And, uh,

and they were on a section of public land at that time during that initial interaction. And, and so, uh, he basically says, no, it's illegal to corner cross. You can't do it. I'm going to have to report you to the authorities and so forth. So after that, Steve Grandy and others at Elk Mountain contact the Carbon County Sheriff's Office several times trying to get them to issue citations, or in fact, according to the owner of the property, arrest these guys and rip them off the mountain. He wanted to cough them and stuff them. He did. That's exactly what he wanted. And that did not happen. The sheriff's deputy did interact with Brad, Phil, and Zach.

They had an in-person conversation about what had happened. No citations were issued. They basically said, yeah, you're good to go, man. We appreciate you telling us what happened. That was it. And that was the end of 2020. Nothing else. But the primary thing, and I skipped over this, but the primary thing that Steve said is the fact that you touch that T-post, that's a trespass.

You touch that T-post, you make contact with our property, that's your trespass. So that stuck in their head. Like, well, if that's a problem, that's his big problem, we'll solve that. Because you see, Brad is a fence builder by trade. That's one of my favorite details. Yeah. So he. One of my favorite details of this whole thing is he's in the fencing business.

Yeah. Yeah. So he builds fences, plants a T-post. He knows how this works. He knows exactly how high a T-post is. Like if this was a movie, I'd be like, oh, right. It's like a heist movie where they get all the guys with specialized skills together. Yeah. Yeah. You can imagine like the Great Wall of China, right? movie where they get all the all the the guys the specialized skills together yeah yeah you

imagine like the great wall of china right and like the mongol horde coming up to the edge and one guy in the horde being like you know why that doesn't intimidate me i'm a wall builder wall builder by trade yeah so so to to br, he's like, well, that's solvable. Gets home and he says, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fabricate an A-frame ladder that's sized to a T-post so that when we get there, we'll do the same deal, but we won't touch the T-post or the chain. Cause that seems to be the problem. And we want to go back because it's elky and it's fun hunting and there's no one else there and lots of public land so uh they go home there's no criminal activity afoot that just that weird interaction with steve and the conversation they have the sheriff's office um and can i can i ask a quick question Yeah. When the sheriff comes out and he susses everything out and they leave it that, okay, you're cool. The ranch manager does not act.

He is not in agreement. Well, he was very upset that that time around. He was upset. He wasn't like, oh, thanks for the upset that time around. He was upset. He wasn't like, oh, thanks for the clarification. My bad. No, he was not. He was not. Thanks for the clarification.

In fact, what he told us later in the case is that he was under the impression that something was going to happen, that the sheriff's office was going to issue citations or do something later. But they were gone. The hunt was over and he was kind of over it for the time being. Yeah, and he felt that they would follow up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was his perspective. Yeah. So 21 comes around.

Brad fabricates his ladder. They continue to do their homework and nothing has changed. The law side of it, they think everything is exactly the same as it was in 2020. We're still good to go. We had that interaction with the sheriff. Certainly if we had done something wrong, the sheriff would have cited us. I mean, we talked to him, he had all of our contact information, something would happen. And we knew the big issue with was touching the T-post, we'll build the ladder. So they go back, they get tags and they go back to hunting 21 and they bring a fourth person

this time. And that's John Slowinski. And I'm telling you, you say the cinematic quality of this thing. So you have Brad, the fence builder. Zach Smith works for Brad building fences. Phil Yeomans, if I get this right, I believe is married to Brad's sister or maybe, is married to Brad's sister.

Or maybe John's married to Brad's sister. John Slowinski is a director of a band at a high school. So, you know, this is the motley crew of dangerous thugs we're dealing with here. Is, you know, John, the band director, fence builder, his employee, and then Phil Yeomans, who drives, or he repairs delivery trucks for a chip company, Frito-Lay or something like that. Okay. This is the crew. They come back out in the fall of 21, same story corner, they plant their ladder with the legs of the ladder, public, public, public, public, and right over that chain. And they just walk up and down right over the chain and proceed exactly the same as they did it in 20.

Same story. Except this time, Steve Grundy and company are even more angry. And they're following them. In fact, the evidence that we collected showed that Steve and company or other Elk Mountain employees were kind of chasing off the animals, driving their trucks and side-by-sides at animals and kind of scaring them off, following them around. Can I interject one thing? Just for listeners' sake.

Yeah. The ranch manager acting as a representative of the ranch, they have been under the assumption and have been enjoying exclusive access to this public land, which is protected by this corner that they feel is a barrier to entry. So you have a landowner owns and pays taxes on surrounding ground, and because of his surrounding ground's proximity to these pieces of public land, and because of this corner that they view can't be crossed,

they enjoy exclusive access to the point where if this ranch was transacting on the public market as it had in the past, it would be pointed out in the listing that not only are you buying x acres you're getting a lot of bonus land that only you can use so there's a lot there there's a lot to defend here absolutely from the position of the the landowner is defending um a sizable chunk of ground that they had assumed was for all intents and purposes theirs but i think there's another right argument out there of whether or not you should give them the benefit of the doubt that they are operating under that assumption oh yeah okay yeah so all right that's great that's a very good point. And we should have chosen my words more carefully.

Because it could be that they recognize that they don't quite, but it would be nice if they did, and therefore defending this vulnerability is of utmost importance because this whole house of cards could collapse yeah how we posture ourselves yeah you know could have ramifications meaning it could have been you know we got a problem our assumption about about our de facto ownership of this ground is tenuous. The law is rather arbitrary. We paid a good chunk of money thinking that it was right,

but the more I look into this, this is a real vulnerability and something we ought to be paying attention to. And we should play our cards in an effective fashion here because this is not good. I mean, they went so far as to say this would affect the value of the property, didn't they? play our cards in an effective fashion here because this is this is not good i mean they they went so far as to say this would affect the value of the property yeah no it's real important to get to that later yeah oh yeah absolutely and it's funny uh there was a company called the chickering company that had the property listing for elk mountain ranch and we we've saved it elsewhere but i just threw it up on my computer see if i could pull up the listing

and they've taken that listing down. So that listing's gone, which is fun. With the listing pointed out. Yes. Yeah. So the purchaser, if the purchaser, say an individual such as yourself, not schooled in these issues, a purchaser might've looked and been like, sweet. Yeah.

Without really having a deep history in this whole argument. And in their mind, they paid for that. Yeah. Absolutely. So in their mind, they have a property, sweet. Yeah. Without really having a deep history in this whole argument. And in their mind, they paid for that. Yeah, absolutely. So they, in their mind, they have a property, right? Yeah. And, and, and, and in fact, that's, that's what came out later. Um, in, in the case when we were deposing Dr. Fred Eshelman, who's the owner of the holding company that owns the property itself, he said, when he purchased the property, he was under the impression that nobody could corner cross. He said when he purchased the property, he was under the impression that nobody could corner cross. And so he didn't finish the sentence with, and so I had exclusive access to everything. But obviously that's the implication. If no one can corner

cross, which is the only way on foot you could access that land, then there is no foot travel access at all on Elk Mountain period, which is checkerboarded to Wazoo. So yeah, no, that's a hundred percent. And that is it. I mean, we always called it the first corner. Section 14 and 24 is the first corner. It is the prime mover. If that is unlocked, and that's the only place they put this T-post chain, no trespass signs, because they I mean, tacit acknowledgement. If that's blocked, you don't need to block anything else. You can't cross there, you can't get

to anywhere else, period. And there just so happens to be a public road that runs through section 14. So if you can drive on that public road, park your truck, walk off the public road right to that corner and cross that corner then yeah you've got the keys to the castle you can go to all that public land um and that's what these guys did both in 20 and 21 and in 21 obviously just led to

this because 21 is when after much cajoling, the Carbon County District Attorney's Office gave instructions to the Carbon County Sheriff's Office, you will go cite those four hunters for trespass. And how often does something like that happen? That the DA, District Attorney, has to call a law enforcement officer to tell them to issue a citation. Man, I got a friend who is a DA in a county, different state, but neighboring state. I would love to ask him that question. Well, that law enforcement officer had already told them, I'm not, I'm not going to cite you, right? Yeah.

So it's, and this is, I asked the question earlier about that agency you guys were talking about down in Colorado or Washington. And, and, and I think, you know, this is, this is the interesting thing is that, so in Wyoming, uh, game and fish, they're the, the, those individuals and officers can deal with anything under title three, which has to do with game, fish, hunting, and all that, which would be trespass to hunt. That is, they have jurisdiction to issue that citation. But when it comes to regular old criminal trespass, that is not. That's under Title VI. It's a regular crime.

And so game and fish can't issue that citation. They can only issue the other one. So it would have to be the sheriff, but for whatever reason surrounding this corner crossing issue, unlike a speeding ticket, or if you got a bag of meth in your pocket, when it comes to corner crossing, the sheriff doesn't just cite you and arrest you or whatever. They got to write a report, send it to the district attorney and the district attorney has to think on it and then give them the thumbs up or thumbs down. Got it. I don't know why that's the methodology,

but that's apparently what they say they need to do in this instance. Okay. Very abnormal for sure. And so, yeah, that ultimately after they go hunting in 21. Sorry, I got to pause right now. Regular old game warden sitting there on a

county road in plain view, which is a term we learned yesterday. Yeah, from a game warden. From a game warden. Watches somebody who does not appear to be hunting get off of that same county road and walk through somebody's property that is posted with no trespassing signs that, that officer of the law doesn't have to act on anything there.

Cause it's not within their, uh, realm of, uh, things they can act on. Yeah. But a sheriff, which witnesses the same thing, has to write a report, go leave that scene, go to the district attorney, say, hey, I just witnessed this. Let me know whenever you get around to what we should do about that thing that may or may not be trespassing. And that's how the law in Wyoming works? You know, I'll tell you that there's always the law and the law. There's the law that's on the paper and then there's the law and the way it goes. And I'll tell you the way that it would go if a game warden saw someone just trotting through someone's private field, they would probably stop them and do something. And I would imagine they would find

a way to issue some citation. But again, just the way, you know, things are selective, there's discretion in everything. And for whatever reason, when it comes to corner crossing, there is this selectivity that the game warden's not going to do anything. The sheriff's deputy is going to write a report and leave it to the d.a well i mean so specific to it's got to be because there's no law that clearly states whether it's legal or illegal right that's right there is and that's that's like the biggest i want you to keep going and keep cranking along but that's the biggest thing in in my uh in my view on this thing is like the

lingering arbitrariness or not even arbitrary the lingering question like what you're talking about has a stem from the fact of i don't know is the guy gonna is the is the is the da gonna feel like doing this yeah yeah no i'm not to bring him all these citations. If he's going to be like, man, I'm not wading into that. And, and I'll tell you from my conversations with county, uh, county attorneys across state of Wyoming, it very, very few have any interest whatsoever in citing anyone for corner crossing. Um, in fact, I've had at least four or five in three counties and including one who used to work in carbon counties, not there anymore. Tell me under no circumstances, what I cite for, or including one who used to work in Carbon County, is not there anymore, tell me under no circumstances would I cite for,

or would I tell anyone to be cited for it, let alone prosecuted to trial. Yeah. Yeah, because they know they're just opening themselves up to a very confusing, potentially case that just drags on and gets muddy like this one. Or they lose. Yeah. like this one. Or they lose. Yeah.

Like this one. Right. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right.

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. And I do want to kind of move past the criminal case because that's the saga. That's the story. They went hunting again in 21. They used the ladder to do their first corner cross, and they found the other corners, and they continued to cross.

And ultimately, they get cited for criminal trespass. But you got to understand that trespass comes in many flavors and criminal trespasses, but one, I already referred to trespass to hunt, but the big one and the thing that's going to maybe change some things is this civil trespass lawsuit that was filed, uh, as kind of a tack on to the criminal case. Hit us real quick with the criminal case. Just the results. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Uh, well the, the results of the criminal case. Hit us real quick with the criminal case. Yeah. Just the results. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Uh, well the, the results of the criminal case. So we, we, we took the thing to trial, um, after much litigation beforehand, trying to knock that thing out and saying, this is stupid. It's not a crime. It's legal, so forth and so on. But, uh, we, we didn't win on that, but we went to a jury trial, jury returned a verdict and just a little under two hours, not guilty. How hard was jury selection?

Would you throw out landowners? We, we did not throw out landowners. We did throw out a couple of people who had some business connections to this landowner. Okay. Um, because they candidly were like, well, we just don't really know how that's going to work for us. Um, if we, um, there were, uh, I happen to be a fence builder. No, no. So when we, we, was it, was jury selection hard? It, it actually was a little easier than I thought. There did break out some debate among

the potential jurors, um, over corner crossing and what, what we should be doing when you're, when you're out in the world traveling and, and what's trespassed, what's not trespassed, which was very interesting. It just, just. Was there hunters on the jury? I think, yes, there was. The foreperson, foreman was a hunter. Yeah.

Uh, and if I remember correctly, the foreperson during jury selection, he told this story that was something like, well, I was out hunting once and I was right, I was getting near the property line. And I, but I thought to myself, you know, I'm going to be really careful. I don't, I don't want to get too close to the property line. So I'm going to stay a good hundred yards from the property line. I won't even get near it. And my thought process was, oh, this guy, he, he might actually get it. Like he understands, but I think the prosecution thought, oh, this guy really is going to be a stickler. And, uh, and, uh, and so I thought they were going to knock him out for sure. And then when they,

we kept going back and forth, knocking jurors out and he kept sticking along. I was just thinking, well, just let him stay. And sure enough, he's our foreperson. Yeah. Cause you could read that as like, he's overly deferential to private property rights, or like he knows that this is a mess and he wants to cover his own ass. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Or, or he pre appreciates the absurdity of it, or at least the results that would come from if that's really what trespass is. Yeah.

So he stuck around and we got not guilties on for all four guys on two different theories of trespass. And deliberation was how long? Just under two hours, which was great. Zach Smith actually knocked over his water pitcher onto John Slowinski during the verdict reading, which was great. Zach Smith actually knocked over his water pitcher onto John Slowinski during the verdict reading, which was great. Um, he stood up and there was a water pitcher in front of him, knocked it and flipped it

right into John. So. Do you know, do you know, do you have any insight into the deliberation room? Nope. Jury jurors would not talk to anybody. Wouldn't talk to, uh, reporters wouldn't talk to us. So no, don't know. Don't know what went on there.

And then interestingly, during jury selection, the three guys from 2020 were issued citations by the sheriff's deputy for the 2020 hunt. They're like, we know where those guys are. Yeah. It was really bizarre because there were jurors in the room when the sheriff handed them citations up right at the beginning of trial. For what?

For the 2020 hunt. Same thing. For the first hunt. Yeah. He served them with citations for trespass during jury selection. But then did that trespass case get rolled into the same trespass case? No, no, no. So technically it was going to go on its own separate little track, but a few days after the verdict, the state elected to dismiss those charges. So yeah,

yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. So we almost had to do it all over again. So could I just record? Yeah. Can I just record this one and play it for the next one? Yes. I mean, so thankfully that went away. What do you think their reasoning there was, or their goal? I think maybe they were thinking if they got convictions at trial, we'd have to take a plea on that new set of charges or something like that.

I honestly don't know why they wouldn't just charge it or do it all at the same time. Um, we, in fact, had said that early on in the case was like, well, if you're, you know, either, either that information's coming in cause we're dealing with it now, or it's not, they can't talk about it at all because it's not part of this case and it's not relevant. It's kind of a weird angle that took place, but it got sorted. Um, but, uh, yeah, the, the, the more, and the criminal case thankfully kind of ended that way, ended with a whimper. But in the meantime, in February of the same year, three months before trial for the criminal trial, we got an email, all the criminal defense attorneys got an email from this the criminal defense attorneys got an email from this other attorney who I had not known before said, Hey, I represent the ranch. We're

suing your guys for trespass. You guys going to accept service or do I have to go serve them with papers? Really? It's a fun email to receive for sure. And be like, where are you based? Yeah. So it was an interesting move. I was wondering if that was going to happen and then it did. And so that kicked off this civil lawsuit. Did that letter like state the nature of their civil suit or just said we're starting a civil suit against these guys? It actually attached the complaint, which is the case initiating document for the civil suit. So we saw what the claim was. And so we accepted service and ultimately-

But you didn't know the dollar figure at that time, did you? No, nope. Did not know. Did not know. And that's an interesting- Were you curious about the dollar figure? Well, I was a little bit. I thought it was silly because at least in Wyoming and in many states, you know, trespass can ordinarily only get you whatever damage was caused or a nominal amount of damages. You know, if you trespass, you know, the example I use, because it's something that rings true to me, I used to play a lot of wiffle ball in my parents' backyard when I was a kid. And you'd hit the ball over the fence.

Yeah, yeah. And you hop the fence, go get the wiffle ball. And you're in your neighbor's yard for five seconds and you grab the wiffle ball and you go back. Well, is that trespass? Technically, yeah. You didn't ask for permission. You're on their property. That's trespass.

Is it 25% of the value on their property that's trespass is it 25 of the value of their house worth of trespass um i don't think so so the court if they were to sue that little kid if that were true what is happening in steve's neighborhood i mean there'd be rich yeah or poor depending on. Oh, yeah. There's some arrows flying around. I'd be rich. Yeah, yeah. There'd be a lot of cross. Counter suits.

There'd be a lot of counter suits among the various families with kids. Yeah, right, right, right. So I just, in that instance, you could get, if you really wanted to sue, you'd get nominal damages, which is, it's always some $10, $20, $50, whatever. That's the way I looked at it, but I cared about the value because I wanted to take the case to federal court because they had filed their case in state court. And I was really keen on, no, if we're going to do this, let's get an answer and let's get a real answer. So I wanted to go to federal court.

So I told the guys, look court. Um, so I told the guys, look, this is my theory. This is the way I want. I think we should do this. Um, and so it all kind of shook out that the guys were like, all right, we're going to use you do the civil case for us. Like we all four, cause I can do all four of them in a civil case. So they were like, you do the civil case. Um, and so the very first thing we did was we removed, that's the word for it, we removed the case from state court to federal court. And the reason the dollar figure mattered is because there were two grounds that we raised to try to get that thing into federal court, because federal courts have limited jurisdiction. And the one ground we

said that we were a little more confident on was we're citizens of different states. This is a Wyoming company and we are Missouri residents. Well, technically, it's got North Carolina citizenship, that company, because it's an LLC. Doesn't matter. Boring. But it's a different state. But we also need to satisfy the amount in controversy. Needs to be more than $75,000. We need to affirmatively show that. So we put in our notice, look, this thing, and we cited the

property listing, this property is worth all this money. And they're claiming, and they claimed in their complaint that we clouded the title to their property by corner crossing. So we argued, look, if they're saying that we're affecting the marketability of this 16.22 billion or whatever it was, uh, property, then certainly it's that much is at issue. So take our case. And interestingly, you guys came up with the number at first. Okay. At first. And interesting.

Because it was a challenge. Yeah. Because we wanted to take it to federal court. And we said, look, they're complaining that we're messing with their ability to sell this property. You got to take our case. The other angle was we said there's a federal question here. The federal question is what unlawful enclosures act? How does that apply?

There's all this federal land at issue. Access is a hugely important public interest. This court needs to answer that. We need an answer. Interestingly, they, of course, asked for the case to go back to state court. And they said, that's because they ain't that much at issue. They haven't shown that there's that much at issue. They actually said that way back when they They said, look, they haven't shown the amount in controversy. We didn't say the amount in controversy was that much.

You know, there's no federal questions here. Just a regular old trespass lawsuit. Send us back to state court. They said that. And they lost on that. And their motion to send it back was denied. Kept the case stayed in federal court, which was huge.

And then we tried to, it's a strange little judo here, then we tried to dismiss their case and say they don't have one. So it's just a lot of, yeah. And still there hadn't been a dollar amount floated out there. Not yet, not yet. Because that would come later. We lost that motion to dismiss, but the judge said something really interesting in that order. He said, look, I don't think I can dismiss this case yet, but I do think you can raise a defense to a corner crossing someone sues you or claims that you've committed a trespass because you corner crossed by saying there's a federal law that protects me. Just like Brad and company had said way back when to that sheriff's deputy. Is that common for a judge to throw out like a tip?

Well, we had put that in our motion. We said that's why he should dismiss it. And there was this question of whether we could even raise that defense. Oh, he said, I can't, I'm not going to dismiss it, but that's a, that's a arguable point. Yeah. He said it's, this isn't enough to throw it out, but this is something that is worth considering. Exactly. That's exactly what he said. He said that that's a real thing to consider. That give you some kind of like warm and fuzzies inside. Absolutely. I mean, you know, I'll, I'll lose the battle, but win the war all day long. So that's okay. You know, it set me back, but it still gave me

the path. So no, I was, that was a good sign for sure. But then after we lost that motion, that's what triggers kind of, okay, we got to start exchanging information and discovery. And very first disclosure we got, I remember I was, I think I was driving back. It was, I was in my car.

With the turtle. Not with the turtle. No, no, just me. Uh, I, maybe I was driving back from like a weird little assault trial I had in Rollins or something. I remember. That sounds like a country song.

No, you've driven through Rollins, right? Yeah. Yeah. A weird little assault trial. It doesn't take long. I'm pretty weird little assault. Doesn't take long. I'm pretty sure it was. It was this guy. He was a truck driver, and he got jumped by four other truck drivers because he was trying to get up to the fuel pump,

and they were just sitting there playing on their phone or something. So he was honking his horn. Oh. And he didn't know that they had like four people in the cab of their truck. He just thought it was just the driver, and they popped out and kicked his ass. And, but he got cited too. Um, and so he wanted to try the case cause he's like, no, I'm the victim. So yeah, I remember that.

Yeah. We went, we had a trial. Um, we won that trial. Um, yeah. Uh, and then, uh, so I was driving back and I got this ping on my phone and it was the initial disclosures document from, uh, from the, the ranch. And that's the first time they've got to say what they think their damages are. Um. Trying to read that while you drive.

And yeah, take a peek. Well, I, I didn't read all their crazy attachments, but I, I did look for a number. I was just trying to find a number is what I cared about. And that's when I saw for the very first time they had this, it was, it starts off simple $10 for damages. And then it starts, then it gets weird. 3.1 million to 7.75 million for actual damages arising from defendant's conduct colon 10 to 25 diminution of value of the real property parentheses subject to revision and i i just kind of i couldn't i i couldn't quite understand exactly i i think i liked it on one hand because they conceded the mountain controversy finally.

So now I knew I was in the right court. But then on the other hand, I was like, they really think that they're going to show this. Because the way I always thought about it was this. If they're right and we had no right to corner cross, then there's no loss of value to their property. Their conception of what they have stays exactly the same. But if they're wrong and they can't stop people from corner crossing, well, then they don't have any, if there's some little premium that their property enjoys because no one can corner

cross, well, that premium is false. It never existed. It's like if you bought a place thinking that there's a whole bunch of gold on it and then the gold's not actually there. You're not entitled to that. That's what happened to me when I bought my house. Yeah. Tale as old as time. Yeah.

So they're like damned if they do and damned if they don't. Like the value is always imaginary, essentially. Right. I always felt, maybe you can get to this in your narrative. I always felt that this gentleman's, the landowner's gripe should have been with some people in the real estate industry. You know. Or his attorney who did the deal. Why is he not mad at him?

Maybe because the statute of limitations is run. You know what I mean? If I bought a thing on an assumption and I was led by people I'm paying commissions to, fees to, to vet, right? And due diligence on a on a purchase and then it winds up being that some contractor says hey i don't know if you realize uh everything inside this place is black mold right do i go you know what mr? You owe me money for this house. Or would I go, man, I need to go talk to my building inspector who said everything's cool. Yeah, yeah.

It just felt so misassigned. So the blame. I think that that's absolutely right. It's definitely misassigned blame. I think that that's absolutely right. It's definitely misassigned blame, but I think it was just, it was in his mind, and I'm just reading tea leaves, that this is the enforcement mechanism of the right he thought he had. Is that he, when he bought the property, he was like, okay, look, people are going to try it, I guess, but they can't. And I'm going to win this. I'm going to stamp it out and I'm going to throw out these numbers because I want to show how serious I am about how I value this privilege that I believe I enjoy, this property interest that I believe I have.

And so I think it was kind of a bark, not a lot of bite, a lot of bark. And I think that there was a realization of that because of the public attention on the case that if we can get out into the atmosphere, this is really what you're facing. And believe me, not a fun conversation to call a fence builder, his employee, a truck repair guy, and a band director and say they think the damages are getting close to $10 million. What's in your accounts right now? Yeah, yeah. Not a fun conversation at all but i'm just trying to but so this is like trying to get the law i don't want

to stop you because you're doing a great job explaining the whole thing i'm just trying to i've never been able to grapple with the logic it's it's more of an attempt to keep the house of cards to make the house of cards look like it's still standing essentially? Yeah. You know, I mean, we were talking earlier about security theater and how like, you know, TSA, for example, they, they wear their uniforms and they have their scanners and they do all their stuff and they look really serious and they're kind of, you know, stern folks because the visual of security is more important than the reality. Like, can they actually stop stuff? We know they don't stop stuff. We know they're not good at it.

But for most people, just the, the apparatus, the visual is enough to make it secure. You're not going to try it. You're not going to test it. And I think that was the concept behind it. You've never lost a pocket knife to those guys. You can look me in the eye. Well, I don't.

Tell me they haven't found your pocket knife. I've never bought a pocket knife, but I. Everyone at this table can attest to their effectiveness at pocket knife detection i i i stray shotgun shells well i you know i think their stats when they do their quality control are not very good but with stuff that can actually get through i'm joking yeah yeah but but but yeah i'm not joking we've all. Yeah. But, but, but yeah. I'm not joking.

We've all lost knives to those people, but go on. Yeah. But, but so I, I think that the concept was if I throw out, this is how serious it is. It's 10 million, $7.75 million worth of damages. Do not even think about it. That was the, that was the message to everybody. It's peacocking. Yeah.

Don't, exactly. to everybody it's peacocking yeah don't exactly but it like did they ever acknowledge that in like suing for the that amount of damages to the property they're also admitting that the damage was done because corner crossing is legal no but there's i know that that's what they're saying well the damage was done because he did it. Right. And he owes me. Yeah. Because corner crossing is legal.

Like it's. Well, yeah, it is strange. Am I just reading it wrong? No, no, no. You're reading it exactly right. And, and I think there was two angles of this. When they're trying to be legitimate, their claim was, well, these four guys and everybody who had been helping them with funding and BHA, everybody else that's involved in this issue of, of recognizing the legality of corner crossing, um, they're in

some conspiracy to just have everybody run amok on the ranch and, and commit just serial after serial trespass. So I think that was the concept is like, well, these guys are the spear, their tip of the spear that's going to puncture my property rights. So that's why I'm going to go after them. But I think the reality, if you. Yeah, that's, that's, that's good. Yeah.

Yeah. That satisfies. Yeah. But it also speaks back to the flaw in their initial strategy, right? Which we've discussed. It's like, if that is what you wanted to circumvent, you don't call the sheriff. You don't call the DA.

You have a person to person conversation with this group and you figure out a way to let them continue on what they're legally doing in a way that is completely inconspicuous to every other group of hunters out there that could ever go down that County road. It'd be better if you parked up by the house. In fact, why don't you park up at the ranch house? And Missouri hunters would have liked to keep this spot a secret as well. Exactly. I mean, that's the hunting number.

That's the real victim here. These guys are now out. Their spot is blown. Spot. Yeah. Yeah. secret as well exactly i mean that's the hunting that's the real victim here these guys are now yeah yeah it's gonna be a pumpkin patch up there yeah what in a civil trial what is the damage amount assigned to losing a good hunting spot 10 million because you blew this whole thing up now it looks like that like you know i was trying to make this analogy before you know that famous photo of people trying to get to the klondike gold fields they're climbing up that pass out of whittier that's what that ladder looks like right now going into this golden staircase something like that yeah yeah yeah

yeah no no i said that that whole question was, and it got stranger still, because as the case progressed, they got an expert who was going to, who opined about this diminution in value of corner crossing as legal. And that was how he based the opinion too. It wasn't like, oh, my opinion is based on what the, the footfalls of these four hunters in 2020 and 2021 caused this damage. His opinion was, well, if a court says it's legal, this is what's going to happen to the resale value of your ranch. And he even went higher. He said that the diminution in value could be as high as like 30%.

Just because that's, he knows selling ranches and this is how hard it would be. Yeah. So then, so that, I guess the damages went up a little bit. And then we got to kind of the eve of the summary judgment hearing and we get this filing from them that says, look, if you rule in our favor and you say corner crossing is illegal or

that these guys committed a trespass in the way that they did their corner crossing, we'll drop our damages. We won't ask for any money. And they can keep hunting. And this went to the court. Yeah. They filed this with the court.

They filed that with the court and they said, if you rule in our favor, we're not asking for any money. We won't ask for anything. But they waited until right before that. Wouldn't that point be not, why would the court be able to consider that because they're not the court's not negotiating i i don't know if it was to if it was an an act of diplomacy and it was like bringing the beer to the guys at the the fish cleaning giving them an off ramp yeah yeah it

was like look don't don't worry if if you're if you have heartburn about ruling in my favor, because I'm going to crush these people with the damages. Don't worry. I'm not going to do that. Got it. And, and so that. But was that presented to the, the alleged trespassers as a deal or did it, was it just sitting in the court? No, it was just filed with the court. It was just, it was just filed with the court saying, look, if you, if you rule in our favor, we're, we're

going to drop this or we're not going to even go for all that. But then are your clients notified of this, of this question? Yeah. Oh yeah. No, they, they, they, yeah, they, they would see that, but it wasn't, it wasn't like an offer of settlement. It wasn't like, Hey, let's settle this thing. It was just to the judge. So it kind of was what it was. And the judge says? Well, ultimately, the judge ruled in our favor, so the judge never addressed that issue at all. Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah. It was just kind of sitting out there. It was just an interesting thing. He never had to weigh in. He's never forced to weigh in on that. No, I did not have to weigh in on that side of it. Yeah, so we go through that whole discovery phase, collecting evidence and whatnot through, uh, end of March of 23, I think maybe, no, April 15th of 23. Um, and then we all filed

competing motions saying, you don't need to have a trial in this case. We win for this reason. Um, and they filed their corresponding motion. And then we had a summary judgment hearing on those motions on May 10th of 23 and made our arguments directly to Judge Scavdahl. Um, and kind of, he questioned us, peppered us. He's, he's a very prepared judge and he, he was ready and he had lots of questions for everybody. Um, and then we waited and then it was kind of, okay, well. Can you give me a sense of when you, what would be a question? Well, so. Just like, I'm just curious how particular are his questions?

Oh, pretty, pretty particular. For example, I think I spoke for maybe 20, 30 seconds. I've got the transcript somewhere, but I spoke for maybe 20, 30 seconds and he interrupted me with a question of something like, well, how is this not... They have this bundle of sticks is the way lawyers like to talk about property rights, and they have a right to exclude people from their property. And that includes the super adjacent airspace above their property. So when they cross through that corner, I mean, they are crossing through airspace that's technically above their property. So when they cross through that corner, I mean, are they, they are crossing through airspace

that's technically above their property. So why doesn't that affect their right to exclude? I mean, it was like that level of granularity. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, and so, uh, so yeah, you'd get those questions. He asks about the damages thing too. He kind of had the similar question that we've all

been wrestling around with, with like, well, I, damned if you do, damned if you don't, how do I, how do I reconcile that, um, uh, this premium that they're placing on their property? So yeah, it was, it was detailed. He was ready. And then we waited. So we were kind of just getting ready for trial because you got to prepare in case the judge isn't going to rule. You got to- Waited how long? We waited, oh shoot. I think it was a couple weeks. Okay.

I think his decision came out on May 23rd, if I'm not mistaken. And so we waited two weeks just about to get a ruling. And when he issued that order, that kind of took a lot of stuff off the table and clarified quite a bit. This ambiguity about corner crossing, I think was taken away. I mean, everything that we've always thought about just the absurdity of it, the practicality of it, that order summarizes ruling. The public is entitled to a right of reasonable access across the corner from public to public in the checkerboard. And when they do that,

they cannot touch the private land, they cannot damage the private land, and the private landowner can't stop them. And what about the, he asked about it, so what was his take on the air? Yeah, so he didn't go in that very specific direction of what does airspace mean and how do we divvy it up? How can he, to get to quote Tom McGuane, can't ignore it. I mean, what about the air? Yeah. What he hung his hat on was precedent. He hung his hat on a couple of cases, in particular, this really old case called McKay.

It was a sheep herder was trailing his sheep through the checkerboard and landowner and similar case actually, because he was prosecuted criminally and sued civilly. And the court said, it's not, it's not civil trespass to the sheep half and the sheep herder have to be able to access those public lands. And it's not trespass for them to access them in a reasonable fashion. So sheep are all going over a little sheep ladder.

Yeah. No, no. You know, that'd be a good way to fall asleep at night. Just picture a little sheep going up and over that. Sheep going up and over that ladder. Yeah. So, so he hung his hat on that, on that case. But as far as the airspace question, I guarantee it's coming back. It's going to come back on this appeal that we have going on right now. And we're going to have to, we're going to have to pin it down or at least respond to it. But the way we responded to it last time was, look, airspace trespass, which is kind of this, it's a weird question because it hasn't really affect us too much. We've already had cases that say airplanes are not trespassing on private property when they're flying overhead. But there was kind of this threshold of some undetermined amount of

space above the land that a private landowner has a right to control. But the trespass cases have always said it's not an actual trespass if you use that airspace or go through that airspace unless it causes damage or interferes with the use of the airspace or go through that airspace unless it causes damage or interferes with the use of the airspace. And that was what we hung our hat on is to say, look, if they're going to go with an airspace trespass, whatever. Well, they weren't using the wide open range land airspace or the land itself at all, other than their T-posts. And we weren't interfering with that non-use of that land. So it's not an actionable trespass. That was our response then. And it didn't really become super

crucial at that in Skavdal's ruling, but it's something we'll have to address when we get to Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers. You're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery,

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. What's the appeal look like? Yeah, so right now, we don't know quite yet. We just know that the case is on appeal all the way. There was this whole motion to stay Scavital's ruling, and that got denied.

Basically, the landowner said, look, if you don't stay this ruling, come hunting season in the fall, everyone's going to be running rampant over my land. I actually don't know what the current status of that is. I don't know if people have been corner crossing or not, uh, because I think. Have you been out there? Have you driven out to the. I've driven, I've driven through, but I've never been out to the corner. I've never been, I want to go. I do. I, uh, I, I want to go right to that corner. I really, really do. I feel like when this is all settled, the, the band director should bring his marching band out. Yeah.

Dude, I personally have zero appetite. I would have zero appetite to hop that corner, man. Just like, it's just become a real. That's a really interesting point because there's nothing, it's already been discovered, right? So it's not like a sneaky hunting spot anymore. Um, so like if you're, if your point of view is, is purely just hunting, it's not going to be to this very known place now.

Right. But, uh, I just made a really interesting observation and Ryan and I were, were talking about it because I drove out to Buffalo, Wyoming. TRCP and BHA did listening sessions where they tried to invite in stakeholders to discuss corner crossing and just kind of get a temperature of everybody's feelings. And Maggie Hudlow went to a couple for us too. And kind of in the hopes that something really dramatic would happen really um that uh we could you know put on the website and talk about and and the most impactful part of that to me was like everyone in that room was very interested in access to public land nobody in that room was all that wrapped up in

corner crossing. The takeaway that I had. Not wrapped up in that specific issue. Not wrapped up in that specific issue. The takeaway that I had is this is something that we do. This is something that we have done. And this is something that we will continue to do.

And it's just not, it's not an issue. It's not something that we talk about. Yeah. Right. Because it's, not, it's not an issue. It's not something that we talk about. Yeah. Right. Because it's, it is a means of access currently. It has been a means of access. And, and even the landowners present, they were much more concerned about, well, these places

that it, you know, it's like a thoroughfare where it's a bigger chunk and people park there. What about the parking? And what about the, you know, stuff like that thoroughfare where it's a bigger chunk and people park there what about the parking and what about the you know stuff like a bunch of proxy arguments yeah yeah my interest in it um my interest in this subject which is deep has mostly always stemmed from how could something like this be unclear? Yeah. Like of something of like such huge ramification and such squabbling and lossy, like how could,

and I'm sure cause you work in the law, you're probably aware of a lot of things that are unclear, but I'm like, how in the world is this not even when the world is unclear, even going all the way back to when they came up with this checkerboard system, they weren't like, huh? Someone, this could be someone that the way back to when they came up with this checkerboard system they weren't like huh someone this could be a little yeah there's someone that the railroad back in 1890

or whatever the hell wouldn't have been you know what i keep thinking about since they gave us every other section but it's like crisscross it's someday but that that is the genesis of the unlawful enclosures act was to address people, landowners, entities trying to strategically purchase. Right. And block off other chunks. It would be fine if it was just that federal thing deciding it, but then you have states form and the states do things differently. Yeah. And I'm sure in a lot of cases too, you, you know,

like you grow up in counties where you're like, you do not mess with, with that landowner over there. Like everybody knows that type of thing. I guess my take on it, I guess the point I'm trying to make about it, if this had just been to settled again and again over time, right. And it had gone to the Supreme court and the Supreme court's like no corner crossing. I don't think I would, I don't think I would have ever been in a situation of sitting there

looking about how to overturn that Supreme court decision. Right. Just the way there are people always plotting how to like overturn Supreme court decisions. I just wouldn't have been in that pot of people. I'd have been like, oh, it's just, you know, it's just been decided. But in learning that it hasn't been decided

and it's unclear, and I've put this, I've expressed this in interviews, it's like, if they are going to argue about this, I just really want the Axis side to have a really robust clearly articulated argument because i know that i'm not worried about that argument coming from the other

side it'll be funded it'll be articulated very clearly and it's like if there's arguing yet to be done i'm interested in the argument but i would never have caught on to like you know what i mean i would never caught on to trying to um upset something that had been clearly fired you up if it was just always a settled thing and you wanted to overturn it yeah it wouldn't be like me and being mad about 400 square inches of hunter's orange i'd like to overturn that i would never have sought to overturn this because it just would have been how i would never have sought to overturn this because it just would have been how i would have just accepted it as like that's just the way things are by god you would have accepted it the same way you accept a private property line yeah i would never think

like yeah i would never be the guy who's like you know can they really do that right i'm gonna go back to the beginning of time and find out if they can really do that. And, you know, I think that your, all of your reaction, you know, isn't this obvious, is how I felt when I first learned about this. And I pulled it up just because it's funny and it fits. It's how the Supreme Court, at least one justice thought about it too. One time this case made, or this kind of issue made it all the way to the Supreme Court called Leo Sheep. And Thurgood- Leo what? Leo Sheep. Okay.

Leo Sheep Company. Sheep being the animal. Yep. Sheep being the animal. Leo Sheep Company versus United States. Oh, got it. Got it. And so Thurgood Marshall actually said during oral argument- Really? Yeah. He said this. Heard of that guy. Thurgood Marshall actually said during oral argument. Yeah, he said this. He said this. Is it not true if you look at the checkerboard that it would always be possible to stay on government land except where you had to cross at corners?

So is it not possible that Congress, you mentioned the widespread understanding that people could go any place they wanted to in those days without worrying about having somebody build a fence in front of them. Is it not likely that Congress did not dream that there would be any problem about cutting across a corner every mile or so? That was his question in 1979. No kidding. Is that where this is headed? Supreme court? Like what's the pathway? What's the legal pathway? Yeah. So, so we So we sucked the case to federal court. We kept it in federal court. We won it in federal court. Now they're appealing to the 10th Circuit. That's the next part of the dance.

The 10th Circuit is the federal court of appeals. It governs Wyoming and a few other spots. But now it goes beyond Justice Skavdal, correct? Yeah. Yeah. So Justice Skavdal, correct? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, so Judge. And I say that because when the, the, his opinions on the stays. So when, uh, the motion for it, for a stay was denied justice that remained with Justice Skavdal. Justice Skavdal wrote his opinion as to why he would deny the stay.

And in those opinions, there's a lot of things that I took as like very, very positive for a pro-public right to access public ground standpoint. But now, I imagine those opinions will be considered by a higher court. Yeah. But it won't be Justice Skavdal. His opinion is on paper right now, and he won't be the judge of this again, correct? Yeah, that's right. So Judge Skavdal issues his decision down below everything that we've been talking about. He also says, I'm not going to stay that

order. I mean, I'm not going to put it on pause, not put it on ice. You guys can, it's the law of the land in Wyoming for now. They appeal to the 10th circuit. The 10th circuit has a broader jurisdiction. They hear appeals from Wyoming, but they also govern cases out of Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and strangely, the parts of Yellowstone National Park that extend into Montana and Idaho. That's the jurisdiction of the 10th Circuit. They will review Judge Skavdal's decision and they will either affirm it, meaning, yep, we're good with it. They will reverse it or they will reverse it in part. They'll review it without all you all in the room.

Well, we're going to present arguments on paper. We're going to probably have oral argument in front of them to argue. That'll be part of the review process. Part of the review process. And then they will reach their decision without us in the room. Yeah, they will. But there's a possibility they could just look at it and be like, there's no appeal. Or no. No, no, no.

There is an appeal. They're going to make a decision one way or another. Probably won't have that till next year sometime. Um, and then after that, the losing party, whoever loses at that stage would have the opportunity to petition the Supreme court to take a look. So that's where one step away. When you think about what you just said and that this might go to the Supreme Court, you've been practicing law for seven years. I mean, in your wildest dreams, did you have any idea that you'd be involved in a case? Yeah, what would remain your case? So many people are interested in this and like, I mean, it's got to be just like a trip. I have always wanted to be an appellate lawyer.

Um, and I, when I was in law school, I was pretty nerdy. Um, you can ask my wife. I used to go on runs and listen to Supreme court arguments on my headphones. Um, and, uh, I, uh, I applied to be admitted to the Supreme court last summer. Yeah. Cause I was at a feeling, uh, I've wanted a case to go and I've wanted to do it for this kind of one of my goals. Um, so no, uh, this is what I want to do.

So I'm excited it's happening and there's, I'm excited that there's a possibility it could happen, but I'm ready to do it. And as long as the guys will have me, I'll keep doing it. Very cool. Yeah. And,

and you're all the way to the Supreme court. Can we come down and record from the Supreme court? But what do you think justice Roberts? Yeah. Yeah. Steve can be, can I, can I just ask a question?

We're going to have to get a couple more chairs in here. We didn't really get to the takeaway here at the end of our talking points. Let's do it real quick. Oh, take it over, Cal. Oh yeah, just before we move on, Steve, you have a hard out in 20 minutes. I just want to throw that out. My ear saga is getting closer to conclusion. You want to talk about the takeaway at the end? It's pretty important, I think.

Oh, well, he just said that. I think it's... I'll read it flat out. It says, what people should know. Sufficiently, you can take this to task or agree or whatever sufficiently careful non-damaging corner crossing in wyoming is legal under current wyoming law due to iron bar decision statewide that's right so that does that mean that does that mean that there is zero legal risk of someone getting cited, hollered at, advised against by a law enforcement official, corner crossing? When Brown versus Board of Education was decided, that was the law.

And you probably remember the images. Yeah. Just because something gets issued as a decision and it is the law doesn't mean practically people are going to agree with it or follow it. Got it. Especially with something that's contentious like this. And so what I'll say is this, legally speaking, I would feel you

got real, real strong defense with that Ironbar case. And especially it's not civil trespass, no way. Absolutely not civil trespass because that's what Ironbar says. Criminal trespass is a little squishier deal and local county attorneys can kind of do, they have a lot of discretion to bring cases, even if it's going to be hard for them to win. So could you get cited for criminal trespass? Yeah, you could get cited for criminal trespass. Would you win on that case? I would feel pretty good about your odds. That's the thing I wonder too when I've been thinking about this is how much appetite right now, how much appetite would even be to cite somebody knowing the depths that you're wading into. All I can say is that there have been at least four or five current county and deputy county prosecutors across state of Wyoming that I have seen since the decision came out who have all

slapped me on the back and congratulated me. Is that right? That's what I was going to ask you. Like, did this like kind of reverberate all the way across Wyoming? So like the landowners are aware of it, county prosecutors are aware, like everyone's kind of aware that this is the deal now in Wyoming or. Wyoming is a small town with long streets. Right. Um, it, people know about this. Yeah. Um, whether a prosecutor is going to be willing to say, you know, I'll take the bull by the horns and let's do it again.

I mean, there wasn't much appetite for that before. I doubt the appetite has gone up for that, but it could happen. I mean, it could. But like I said, I like your odds. Can I do an addendum to the takeaway? takeaway for you hunters out there uh and mushroom pickers and whatnot this was a surveyed corner okay pay really close attention to the word sufficiently careful non-damaging corner crossing this is a surveyed corner where the the exact location of this corner has been certified right fences just the existence of fences um do not necessarily denote the location

of property lines and i'd like to add to that your Onyx is unfortunately not going to be to the specificity that you're talking about. It's going to get you in the ballpark, but you need to find a pin. I mean, this is not a, I mean, I, the app I use most in life outside of probably my text app is Onyx. I wouldn't want to live without Onyx. It is the most valuable hunting tool, digital hunting tool that I can think of. But it doesn't show my property line where it sits enough that you're putting, think about what we're saying. You're walking on a checkboard and you're placing your feet so carefully that you're on the black

and you never touch the red. That is not what any digital mapping app has never told you that it's delivering you that level of accuracy. Right. You could be three feet off and breaking the law. It's not just the app. I mean, it's just the, the, the tech. It's not like specific to on X. Yeah. It's aerial imagery. It's when it's how much. So I think it's very relevant. The degree of position of your. In the Justice Skavdal's stay at the end, he says, I want to take this opportunity. The defendants in this case peaceably crossed.

Do you like how I'm playing lawyer, Ryan? I like it. All right. Defendants peaceably crossed from public land to public land in the checkerboard area on foot without touching the surface of any privately owned land and without damaging any private property. Those were the facts presented to this court for decision. And the court stresses here the importance of public land users accessing public land and only public land in a law abiding, respectful manner, a physical confrontation with the private land

owner, um, which we could get into, uh, instigated by a member of the public may prove to be the single surest way for plaintiff to secure a stay pending appeal because the likelihood of irreparable harm would no longer be speculative at this point. Um, in this, this uh order to deny the stay there's also language that that just says like it was crystal clear the intent of the hunters was to move through this zone so i've certainly said in my podcast if you are going to attempt this, act as if eyes are upon you and you locate the corner and you move through that zone. Don't stop and dink around and pick shit up for God's sake. Just move through clearly with the intent of moving from one area of public into the next area of public. The worst thing that could happen right now, if you're an access proponent, the worst thing

that could happen right now is a bunch of people throw their middle finger up in the air and start willy nilly jumping over fences, corner fences. Yes. And in the judge's order. This is not where, that's not where this sits right now. There were, if this becomes clarified, there will be, my prediction is there will be a lot of attention paid to strategically locating

important corners. There's a way that this will play out. We're probably going to have to raise some money to get these pins. This is not like you out arguing with landowners and ranchers about what. You don't own those elk.

Yeah. Where their fence. And it's just not how this needs to go. You need to read the opinion in the stay. I mean, it's very clear that all the things that we've read in the paper, including a lot of things that we covered here today, which was very thorough, there's still a lot of context that was thought about from Justice Skavdal,

some of which included, like Steve was saying, waving your middle finger. It alludes to the fact that there were phone calls to Iron Bar Holdings and some veiled threats and probably just some fuck yous. But that actually made it into the justice's opinion. Is that right? So you got to. He didn't ignore that.

Did not ignore that. Took it into consideration because. Yeah. Iron bars council brought those points up because, you know, that would be an issue to order a stay of opinion. Yeah. Yeah.

Is if it was, uh, thought by the judge that, uh, there were going to be some physical ramifications, uh, that could hurt somebody if the stay wasn't issued yeah uh kind of kind of uh crappy but more or less right there ryan well no i think that i think that just just to just so people know because if i was listening to this you know while i was trying to work on something in my garage. I might have missed this. A stay is when a decision gets made, but they know it's going to be appealed. So they basically come in and say,

here's my decision, but we're going to stay on, I'm not changing anything yet because I'm going to wait for the appeals process to play out. So we're not going to act on what I've decided, but that's my decision and then we're going to wait down the road for greater clarity is that is that a fair way of describing a stay it's a fair way of describing it just also to be clear though no the stay was denied yeah but i'm saying if everybody was out there having fistfights and stuff absolutely you might be like you know

what okay never mind everybody stop the the stay is in place this is getting out of hand we're Absolutely. He might be like, you know what? Okay, nevermind. Everybody stop. The stay is in place. This is getting out of hand. We're going to, you know, bump it down the road. No, and to just echo everything you guys have been saying, you got to find the survey stake. You've got to physically find it with your eyes. And you've got to cross it carefully. You can use Onyx or a compass to help direction yourself

and orient yourself. A little orient, for sure. Yeah, but you can't rely on X or a compass to help direction yourself and orient yourself. A little oriented for sure. Yeah. But you, but, but you can't rely on it. Like you're saying to your footfalls, you got to use your eyeballs and direct yourself. Is there a process? Like if you can't find that marker, is there

a process to request like a survey or like, let's say I identify a corner where I can access whatever, a few thousand acres of public land, but I can't like identify clearly where exactly that corner is. Like, can you contact a federal agency and say, it's not there? I can't find like. Yeah. So you, you may be able to contact your BLM field office and notify them of that particular section corner missing its survey stake. Because it has to be a thing.

Oh, it happens for sure. Because the old survey stakes were dinosaur bones or whatever they found in the field and they would just pound it into the ground. And now they're these like uniforms, stainless steel or whatever they are. They're called monuments. Every now and then you trip on one. The verb is, yeah, the verb is monumenting because in the law, even if it's wrong, you talk about a lot of people's property lines are wrong, but the way the law works with

those survey stakes, the survey stake is always perfect in the law. It does not matter even if it is wrong. Oh, yeah. The survey stake is monumented. It is correct. It is always correct. Got it.

So, yeah, you should notify BLM field office and maybe they can get it resurveyed or something like that you know what you don't hear the term down to brass tax you want to know my understanding of that is the caps right there is that what yeah that if you wanted to get really a survey buddy told me so i never fact checked him on it on top of that there's like a brass plate, and that's basically it. But since these corners are infinitely small, the lines are infinitely small, to get down to brass tacks is there's like a circle,

and within that you can place a clarifying pin. You can place a tack into that for greater clarification around that that whatever the hell one inner one inch circle is i don't know no it may be true we some people say as people are saying people are a lot more and more i have found those things i mean that would have been a hell of a job i've found those things in the most bizarre places and have always taken a picture of them but then i always get around to thinking like you don't want to show that off it happens to say exactly where you were we found one in alaska recently and i could not picture the person who'd like gotten to there and then figured that out and drove that in the ground

right oh yeah they hadn't been thinking like who cares absolutely yeah because there are just obvious places where even you know a hundred years ago 150 years ago where you have this mindset of like, oh yeah, the tax base is coming. This is all going to be homesteaded. There are plenty of places where you are standing. You're like, not this place. Yeah. He's like, listen, dude, I get it.

I get it. I get it. No one is ever going to come look for this. This is never going to wind up being a thing where people are standing here arguing. Little did they know. Alright, well thanks for coming on, man. Can you come back when something happens? Happy to do it. Oh, and what

timeline? Can I go down there to the Supreme Court with you? You could. You gotta get in line because there's public seating and there's limited space. I want to get right up there with you. I'll be like, another thing! I'll see what I can do. I got an ear thing, so I got to sit up here.

Timeline, one more time. Yeah, yeah. So the deadlines for some of the appeal has been extended a little bit for various reasons. So we expect the very first volley of argument will come out next month from them. They will file the first brief. Uh, it should be November 6th. Then we will file an answering brief either sometime in December or later, depending on if we need more time. Uh, then they will get one more crack at responding to our brief and then it'll be up to the 10th circuit to set argument and make a decision.

I would expect a decision one way or another sometime late spring or summer of next year, if not later. God, if I was the listing agent or the whatever, or the lawyer who put that deal together, I would be sweating. I would be sweating to be like, at some point, someone's going to have a question for me. I think there's a lot of real estate agents around the country. I was looking at it a little bit. I mean, I saw a property listing the other day. This guy probably has a brilliant mention. You saw a property listing where you're like, yeah, I don't know.

That mentioned exclusive access to public lands that didn't have access. I mean, it's like when you start looking for it. Oh, I mean, there's one up by Ennis and it's like part of the benefit of our HOA, which is another evil fricking entity that I would love to see burned to the ground. Oh man, I had no idea. I will never make that mistake again, man.

Yeah, but there's one in Ennis. It's like part of the benefit of our HOA is exclusive access to everyone's public ground. I just want to go in there and I want to buy a lot and I want to be like, bring on the lawsuits, you sons of bitches. All right, thanks for coming on, man. So in the meantime, you probably have to do

other stuff too, right? You got other clients? Absolutely, yep. Why don't you plug your law firm? Fuller and Semerad. We're in Casper. Gives a call, 307-265-255. So what kind of trouble are you looking for down there?

Anything. I mean, I like a fight. You do divorce? I like a fight. I don't like divorces. You do truck stop ass kickings. Yeah, I do truck stop ass kickings. We were joking on the way.

Are you an ambulance chaser? No, I try to avoid that too. I like to fight. What's your favorite? What's the best call you can get avoid that too. I just, I like to fight. So, you know. What's your favorite? What's the best call you can get? Criminal defense of any kind. I like doing those. You like helping criminals out, do you? I like helping people. Steve, we were joking on the way over that there's still plenty of rural Wyoming that is not dissimilar from rural eastern Montana where people are likely to come in the door and be like, you know that drinking and driving thing?

They're actually serious about it. You ever do that kind of work? Oh yeah. Yeah. Get, get, get a lot of that. Uh, got a trial coming up in Cody, uh, in November. So I'll be off doing that.

You do child custody? I try to avoid it. Have done it, but I try to avoid it. Okay. Don't like that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's not as much fun.

All right. So, uh uh how far what's your range how far do you go i do the whole state of wyoming but i'm barred in nevada and ohio too but i'm inactive in those states because i don't really practice there anymore so if you're law dog and it's in wyoming yep what wyoming that's where it's at you're gonna get just raked over the coals by not using the for your alma mater. You know that, right? The Ohio State, yeah.

I know, I know, I know. I don't know about that. I don't understand this, but I don't have time because I could never get my ear. My ear continues to be a problem. Oh, ride on, ride on, little it run I wanna see your gray hair Shine like silver in the sun Ride on, ride on my love Ride on, sweetheart We, my long-time sweetheart

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