Rebecca Bextel, a conservative firebrand in Wyoming politics, is locked in a legal battle with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, and both sides claim they’re fighting for the public’s access to lands.
It started when she bought a 2-acre parcel of land on the Salt River’s bank in Lincoln County last June and tried to build a mosquito-free structure on it.
The problem is, Wyoming Game and Fish holds an easement designating the land for hunting and fishing. The agency argues to a court that Bextel doesn’t have the right to build on that land without the department’s permission.
A fleeting criminal case, failed negotiations, and a court battle with the state and at least five neighbors has followed.
Somewhere in there, Bextel decided to run for governor as a Constitution Party candidate.
She told Cowboy State Daily that Wyoming Game and Fish’s clash with her “flared up” because she’s running for governor.
Her new fish camp’s neighbor Darcel Hulse disagrees with that assessment, saying Game and Fish is defending its right of way from people trying to build on it — so that self-promoting people statewide can’t plant structures on public-use rights of way.
Game and Fish said it can’t comment to Cowboy State Daily because the conflict is in active litigation.
But in an Aug. 24 court filing, the agency asked the Lincoln County District Court to “eject” and block Bextel from building any structures on the easement.
The case is ongoing.
Once Upon A Time
In 1961, the Lower Valley Power & Light cooperative conveyed to Budd and Earma Pead an easement, for public hunting and fishing on the banana-shaped parcel near the Salt River’s weedy bank.
Months later, the Peads permanently conveyed the easement to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department for public fishing, hunting, parking and camping.
The easement established two permanent rights of way for vehicular access.
As of last June, Pennsylvania resident John Metcalf’s family had owned the property for three generations. But Metcalf didn’t see much use for it.
“This piece of land is kind of out in the boondocks,” Metcalf told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.
He said he sold it for around $10,000 to $12,000 to a “real estate lady” in Wyoming.
Public records show that Salt River Fish Camp LLC, registered to Bextel’s husband Jonathan, bought the parcel in June 2025.
Metcalf’s real estate agent Scott Blackwood recalled the sale.
“When we sold it to Rebecca, we told her we didn’t know much about it. That’s why we sold it so cheap,” said Blackwood. “We just gave her fair warning that she probably couldn’t build anything on it.
“She was willing to take the risk,” he added.
Bextel told Cowboy State Daily in a text-message interview that she bought the land to build a fish camp for her family, including a “little Florida room” to keep mosquitos away from her daughter, who has a genetic disorder.
The camp’s neighbor Rob Meikle cast doubt on that. He said he and other neighbors have seen Bextel’s people trying to build two cabin-like structures.
If a person could win an access route through the northward ranchlands and to the affluent Alpine area, and win the right to build on the parcel, that land might be worth between $500,000 and $1 million, Meikle said.
The Messed-Up Maps
Bextel sent a screenshot of an email from Roy Weber, Wyoming Game and Fish Lands Branch chief.
“As far as a (sic) I can tell, the fishing and hunting easement does not restrict you building some storage buildings on the property,” wrote Weber, according to the screenshot, “as long as they do not interfere with the public’s ability to access the property for hunting and fishing.”
Bextel’s consultant surveyor wrote her in October 2025, saying he was in doubt on the scope of the easements and restrictions tied to them, according to another screenshot.
The easement spans an area stretching to 25 feet on either side of what used to be a canal bank. That canal that no longer exists since it’s been filled, Bextel emphasized in her interview.
The easement also stretches to within 75 feet of each side of the riverbank, court documents say.
At least part of the road to that area has been “quitclaimed,” indicated the consultant in two different emails.
The consultant speculated that only a 150-foot river setback the county requries, plus the canal easement, if applicable, would restrict Bextel’s building.
“I should note however, that my opinion, while relatively informed, is just that,” the consultant wrote, adding that he’s unsure if the canal easement applies.
The consultant wrote another email, screenshots show, saying neither of the visible, potential roads into the area closely match the easement description for the road.
Again, he was stumped.
He floated different explanations: perhaps a low-quality survey had mis-mapped the road, someone knowingly warranted property they did not own, or some other easement was on file in Idaho.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if any of those were the case, or if the WY G&F were the only frequent users of the roads and thus nobody ever bothered to figure out if the access was legal or not,” he wrote.
He advised Bextel to avoid accessing the land from the Idaho side.
Land on the Idaho side dips into other private property, Bextel explained in her interview.
She said Wyoming Game and Fish’s easement doesn’t bar any kind of development.
Wyoming Game and Fish disputes that.
A crew working for the Bextels’ fish camp company installed concrete footings for two buildings without Game and Fish permission over Labor Day weekend 2025, the agency’s court filing says.
Construction kept unfolding, materials kept resting on the canal bank easement the department “reserves for public use and (which) restricts vegetation removal,” the document adds.
Game and Fish’s court filing says the agency told Salt River Fish Camp in a Sept. 30, 2025, notice to stop building.
“Rebecca Bextel, through counsel, responded and asserted in October 2025 that construction and storage on the property would continue,” the filing says.
A response filing by the fish camp’s attorney Matthew Meiring challenges Game and Fish’s assertions that the easement covers the whole parcel, since some of the features defining it no longer exist. And the easement doesn’t “prohibit the improvements at issue,” Meiring wrote.
The Build
In early November 2025, Hulse, who owns Salt River Ranch, noticed Bextel hauling building materials across his land, court documents say.
He called in the alleged trespass to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.
“Bextel asserted that she had the right to use the roads because such access had existed long before Hulse purchased the ranch,” says a criminal affidavit by Lilncoln County Sheriff’s Deputy Trey Andrews.
Hulse said in a Friday interview with Cowboy State Daily that Game and Fish had traded away swaths of the prior access route in a land swap well before he bought the ranch. He surmised it followed issues with the local cattle.
It sounded like a civil matter, Andrews remarked in the affidavit, adding that Bextel needed to provide documentation of a different easement. Until then, she was considered trespassed.
Wyoming Game and Fish trespassed her from its access point for any activities but hunting and fishing; Hulse trespassed her from his roads north of the access point, the affidavit says.
About 10 days later, Wyoming Game and Fish warden Dillon Herman alerted the sheriff’s office that Bextel was transporting building material through Hulse’s property again, the affidavit says.
She was charged with trespassing, according to a Jan. 13 charging document filed in Afton Circuit Court. The misdemeanor is punishable by up to six months in jail and $750 in fines.
Lincoln County Deputy Attorney John H. Olson asked the judge to dismiss the case on May 20; and the judge did — without prejudice — meaning the state can prosecute Bextel again if more evidence surfaces.
Lincoln County Attorney Spencer Allred did not respond by publication to a Thursday voicemail request for comment.
‘Total Fabrication’
Bextel told Cowboy State Daily some neighbors are blocking public access to the fish camp, but that’s not her goal.
She said Hulse blocked off the road running through his land with boulders and let it fall into disrepair. It also was too thin to use, she said. She sent Cowboy State Daily a video showing a soft, approximately 6-foot grassy bank between a power pole and a river.
The river has turned and eroded a passage between the river and the state line, she said.
Bextel’s claim about boulders is “a total fabrication,” Hulse countered in a Thursday interview. “Her people put boulders in the road to drive across our land, because there’s a big washout there — a dip. So that’s the only way they came across the water run.”
Hulse said there’s a public access easement along the river, on his land.
“But her people weren’t taking that public access. They were going across our property, and onto an easement the power company has to run power across, and to maintain that power line,” Hulse said. “And then they were dipping back down onto our property after that.”
He said Bextel and the builders don’t have rights to cross the power company easement.
“She sees the law as she wants to see it,” said Hulse. “For my dealings with this particular woman, she is totally unfit to even consider being the governor of the state of Wyoming.”
Then Came CheckGate
That winter Bextel was traveling, then considering how to get a stack of campaign donation checks from a Teton County philanthropist to a few Freedom Caucus-aligned state lawmakers.
She decided to take the checks to the Wyoming Capitol in Cheyenne in time for the Legislature’s February session since she planned on attending it anyway, she would later tell the public.
Bextel handed out checks on the floor of the state House of Representatives just after the chamber adjourned for the day Feb. 9, its first day of session.
The optics weren’t good, Minority Floor Leader Mike Yin, D-Jackson, told the House two days later — just as lawmakers were voting on a bill that Bextel, a prolific activist and fundraiser, had championed.
Controversy erupted.
After an internal investigation, the House found none of its own members guilty of misconduct. A criminal bribery investigation is ongoing in the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office.
Bextel has cast the “CheckGate” controversy as overblown.
Served
The following week, she was served in Teton County with the trespassing summons.
“For what it’s worth, I believe that the criminal (trespass) was just a big bunch of bullshit,” wrote Bextel in a text to Cowboy State Daily. “I think that the owner of the Salt River Ranch (Hulse) used his connections to try to get them to go after me.”
“Also a lie,” Hulse countered. “All I did was call about her trespassing.”
In another text, Bextel said the trespass charge “and political blowback” came after CheckGate.
The charge was filed before CheckGate. A Lincoln County sheriff’s deputy tried and failed to serve Bextel with a summons in January.
Bextel appeared unaware of that timeline in a Thursday text message exchange with Cowboy State Daily. She wasn’t officially served in her home county of Teton until Feb. 18, court documents say.
By then, CheckGate news coverage had reached a fever pitch.
“That cost me $5K to defend … and there was zero proof that I trespassed within a 10 day period,” wrote Bextel of the criminal trespass case. “You can’t even make this stuff up.”
Getting Political
Meanwhile, Bextel’s CheckGate controversy caught the attention of Wyoming Constitution Party Chair Joshua Shimkus, the latter told Cowboy State Daily in a May interview.
He saw her as a potential ally in the party’s quest to become a major political party by getting more than 10% of the vote in the governor's race.
Bextel switched her party affiliation from Republican to Constitution about one week before her trespassing case was dismissed. She sought, and later won, the minor party’s nomination for governor.
She cast her run as “an insurance policy against Eric Barlow,” the Republican nominee, of whom she’s a persistent critic.
Now, Bextel maintains that Wyoming Game and Fish is targeting her politically.
“The thing with … fish and game flared up since I am running for governor,” she said. “Since Eric Barlow won the primary, I am now no longer allowed to build on my own property."
Bextel also claimed the neighbors are in an “old boys club that’s trying to keep me off the state parcel, and now the (Game and Fish) is in it with the wealthy land owners against the public.”
She said she doesn’t mind if the public walks across her land, and she wants to fight for the public to have access to it.
Hulse cast that as a red herring.
Hunters and fishermen can travel the river to access the land for hunting or fishing, he said. They just can’t do it “carrying a building on their backs.”
Meikle agreed, saying people hunt that area frequently.
And, Suing
On May 27, Bextel — under the banner of the fish camp LLC — filed a legal action against many of the fish camp’s neighbors to the north, plus the state of Wyoming and Game and Fish; a power company and a phone company.
She’s asking the court to designate a private road to her land, which would pass through around five private properties and cross state land via the Kibbie Parkway, connecting the fish camp to County Road 104, court documents say.
The complaint asserts that the fish camp is “landlocked” and the court should designate a right of way through five northern neighbors’ property using Wyoming’s private road laws.
That statute, 24-9-101, says a person whose land lacks an outlet to a public road can plead the court for a private route of access, after several requirements are met.
Bextel didn’t sue Hulse for access.
Rather, she named the Bryan Bates Revocable Trust, Hunt Timothy J & Irene T Revocable Living Trust, Wood Revocable Trust, Duke Investments LLC Randall Meyer and M’Lissa Meyer, Rockin’ M Ranch Wyoming Inc, Alpine Retreat Inc., Silverstar Telephone Co., Michael Kibbie, EJ “Bill” Simpson, King Creek Ranch LLC, the state, Game and Fish, and Lower Valley Energy.
Bextel’s fish camp LLC has, the complaint says, “no lawful access because its Property can only be accessed by crossing privately owned land controlled by third parties who have not engaged in discussions or have refused to permit Plaintiff ingress or egress across their respective properties.”
Neighbors Bristle
Randall and M’Lissa Meyers’ July 27 response in Lincoln County District Court is written in all-caps.
“HER PROPOSAL IS TANTAMOUNT TO BURNING DOWN THE ENTIRE HOUSE AND SAVE ONLY A CLOSET?” it reads. “IT WOULD BE A DISGRACE TO ALPINE, OUR SALT RIVER SECTION, STAR VALLEY, LINCOLN COUNTY AND THE STATE OF WYOMING. A DISGRACE.”
The Meyers asserted that a bridge in Bextel’s proposed route is already compromised; and a stretch of land in the Kibbie Parkway “IS VIRTUALLY UNTOUCHED BY DEVELOPMENT” and is a wildlife corridor.
Timothy and Irene Hunt also bristled in their July 27 response, claiming Bextel has been engaging in “illegal” building on the Game and Fish easement and they don’t want to abet any illegal activity — a description Bextel disputes.
Their parcel is private land hedged with no-trespassing signs, wrote the Hunts, alleging that Bextel flouted those signs before trying to talk to them about access.
Plus, they added, the northern route “is neither reasonable nor convenient” because it would require substantial excavation.
They questioned why the court would force the state and private land owners to give an easement to a parcel that, they assert, “cannot legally be built on.”
Rockin’ M Ranch Wyoming, King Creek Ranch, and HI-Line Equipment Company, both Meikle’s enterprises, filed a joint response asking the court to reject Bextel’s claim.
So Make It Temporary
Bextel had also asked the court to establish a temporary route during the pending action.
Meikle urged against the temporary road in a Sept. 3 affidavit to the court.
Slated for an area 30 horses are likely to use this fall and spring, the proposed temporary road would require the removal of topsoil, placement of gravel and several hundred truckloads of material, Meikle said.
That’s on low or wet areas that flood in the spring, he added.
The build would need culverts and drainage systems; the existing livestock pen would have to be relocated and re-fenced, he wrote.
‘He Is Lying’
Regarding Meikle’s claims of heavy construction needs, “He is lying,” countered Bextel.
“The only time I’m going to have to put in any kind of a new road is on the state parcel,” she said.
Otherwise, she added, it’s an existing road.
Bextel called Meikle a member of the “old boys club.”
“That is the asshole who is trying to fight me from driving across the state parcel because he basically owns it by self through a land lease for grazing,” said Bextel.
Bextel characterized the struggle as not just her own, but a battle over public lands access.
“This is the kind of crap that I’m going to put an END TO when I’m governor,” she said via text. “We’re not going to have private land owners cutting off public access to state lands.”
Meikle acknowledged in a Friday interview that he has a grazing lease on the state lands parcel in question and wants to “defend my way of life.” But he said the public can still access that land as well, from the south.
Meikle said the hunting access dispute riles him more.
“She’s building cabins in the middle of a Wyoming Game and Fish easement that gets hunted every year and has been respected for the last 60 years,” said Meikle. “I really get irritated the way she goes about that.”
Wyoming Says Nope
The Wyoming Attorney General’s Office urged the court not to grant Bextel a temporary road during the case. Like Meikle, the state noted the construction that would have to unfold on state land.
Granting the road, even temporarily, “would unilaterally authorize Salt River to build on and use state trust land without administrative approval or oversight.”
Bextel’s request for an easement is pending before the state Office of Lands and Investments, which is overseen by a board of elected officials, the filing notes.
The AG’s office also argues that, since the power to designate road access stems from the state’s mechanism of eminent domain, Bextel’s company can’t use that power against the state itself.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
