A public-lands access executive order issued by President Donald Trump includes wording that might settle the corner-crossing debate in favor of hunters across the nation, supporters say.
Trump issued the “Reinvigorating America’s Hunting Heritage" executive order Thursday, aimed at increasing hunter and angler access.
A fact sheet later released by the White House specifies that it will include efforts to “unlock checkerboarded and landlocked parcels.”
Some have taken that to mean Trump is pushing for final clarification that corner-crossing is, in fact, legal.
However, Ryan Semerad of the Casper-based law firm Fuller and Semerad LLC told Cowboy State Daily he’ll have to “wait and see” if that’s the actual outcome of Trump’s order.
Semerad represented four hunters in a Wyoming corner-crossing case that gained national attention in 2021 and was resolved by the Supreme Court last year.
10th Circuit Court Decision
Corner-crossing is the act of moving across the pinpoint at the adjoining corners of two square parcels of public land in areas where public and private parcels are interlocked in checkerboard patterns.
A case involving four non-resident hunters who corner-crossed adjacent to parcels of private land near Elk Mountain in southeast Wyoming in 2021 touched off a years-long legal battle that went nearly all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The hunters Semerad represented used a ladder-like device to cross over Fred Eshelman’s land — technically held by Iron Bar Holdings LLC — in Carbon County to access a landlocked public parcel.
The landowners filed criminal trespass charges against the hunters, but a Carbon County jury found them not guilty.
Eshelman and Iron Bar Holdings later filed a civil case against the hunter, and the case dragged on for years.
SCOTUS in October 2025 declined to hear the landowners’ appeal of an earlier federal 10th Circuit Court ruling in favor of the hunters.
Many took that as a de facto legalization of corner-crossing in Wyoming and other states covered by the 10th Circuit. However, the practice remained illegal in Montana and other states outside of the 10th Circuit.
That could change with Trump’s order.
Trump gave Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins 180 days to propose changes to “policies or regulations” that restrict access to federal land.
In Wyoming and other western states, much of the checkerboard land in question is managed by the Bureau of Land Management under the Department of the Interior or the U.S. Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture.
Pendley Optimistic
William Perry Pendley, who was BLM director in Trump's first term from 2019 to 2021, said he’s optimistic the president is pushing the issue in the right direction.
“I believe that access to public lands should be available to the greatest degree possible,” Pendley told Cowboy State Daily. “The (Trump) order is telling the BLM and the Forest Service to increase access to the lands that they manage.”
During the Reagan administration in the 1980s, Pendley was a deputy interior secretary for energy and minerals under then Interior Secretary James Watt, another Wyoming native.
What implications Trump’s order could have for checkerboard lands nationwide remains to be seen, he said. But it’s clear that the president is pushing for greater public-lands access across the board.
Wait and See
It’s too early to tell whether Trump’s order will prompt a sea change of corner-crossing policy, Semerad said.
“It’s very vague at this point. It’s hard for me to say what the administration is trying to accomplish at this point regarding checkerboarded land,” he said.
It could mean that the administration is trying to “codify” the 10th Circuit Court decision in the hunters’ favor, he said.
Or policy might lean toward “land swaps” to clarify public access, Semerad said.
The “other shoe to drop” could be what Interior and the USDA recommend.
“There are 1,000 ways to unlock lands,” and some of them might not be good from the public’s perspective, he said.
That could include swapping parcels of public land for private parcels that aren’t as good, Semerad said.
Or, Trump’s order could imply a good outcome, such as settling corner-crossing in the public’s favor, he said.
Trump and the Republican Party could also be vying for credit with the public leading up to the November midterm elections, he said.
“They could be sending the message, 'We're all for public access — vote for us,’” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
