Corner Crossing: Wyoming case poses more questions than answers for Montana hunters

A recent federal court ruling in Wyoming has once again sparked discussions about the legality of corner crossing.

I want you to visualize a checkerboard. A grid of black and white squares.

Now imagine that layout on a map, where the black squares are public land and the white ones are private. This land ownership layout is common in the west, a relic of past when the government was divvying out land to railroads pushing lines west.

Corner crossing refers to the act of traveling from one piece of that public checkerboard to another, by crossing where they meet in the corners. 

In the recent Wyoming case, a judge found that four Missouri men did not trespass onto adjoining private land as they stepped from public to public land at a corner designated by a survey marker and using a ladder. 

Brett French, Outdoors editor at the Billings Gazette, is here to untangle the issue and give a bit of context as to what this mean for Montana

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Montana Untamed, hosted by Thom Bridge, covers the state's rugged landscape from hook and bullet to policy and science.