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I T E dot com. You were the man who just hunts birds now except let's let's it's Tomagwaen went on a pheasant last year. Tom mcgwaan has. It's like I appreciate with Tom mcgwaan.
He's got He wrote a real good essay on mule deer hunting along.
Oh yeah, that was a good that's 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 white tail?
Listen, I'm machine.
This is an argument worth having.
This machine is on. Phil's machine is on. I'm okay. Phil's machine is on. You miss something, but I'm try to explain where we're at on this, and then we're gonna we're gonna just to titillate, just to titillate. We're joined by the most important lawyer in America right now, Ryan samarand Samarad.
How do you like to say that Samarad?
Samarad most important?
Just like it's spelled. Some people think, which always makes you feel good.
I was seeing it in 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.
He'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 President Trump in the in the in the in the Georgia election. I don't know. I'm just trying just pulling straws here. 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 gonna go like yeah, figures don't. Why but no, it's this guy right here, right right in our studios, the most important lawyer in America. Why stay tuned back to what I said to what said, Well, I wasn't dogging on Okay, we're having a conversation about when public figures. When public figures in the conservation space, public figures and managed wildlife management will want to be able to have their sort of hunting bonafides and then
leverage those to attack hunting. You will find that they often are I'm sorry, they often are bird hunters because they feel that they can do that right that they're 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've made a comment like beware the bird hunter. I didn't mean beware bird hunters. Bird huners. Great. He also clarified except Tom McGain because Tom mcgwaen was a big game hunter and eventually became a bird hunter. And when Yanni and I interviewed him years ago on this show, Tom mcgwen, he said, you know, of speaking of all hunting and he's a hunter. He said something to the effect of, you know, you are
trying to kill things that want to stay alive. Can't ignore that, right, And well, no, he wasn't even he wasn't like acting. He was warning us out about his own his own self. And you're saying, are we gonna ignore are we honestly going to ignore this? Or can we talk about this for a minute, you know, And he's a novelist, he's supposed to he can't ignore. 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 that I was. It was just that there's another there's I could just name a handful of them.
Oh, the super annoying wolf grizzly guy.
No, my goodness, no, no.
No, I'm right.
And and I think this is where I very much agree with you, like these people that it is very very common, like 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 profile versus whisper.
I'm not sure. I mean, what is it rhyme with?
There's a lot whisper.
What it rhymes with?
Most of them are some dainty pointer or possibly a small flusher.
But why can't we say it a red bone? Why can't we say the dog?
Why can't we say the dogs?
Because he doesn't want people to feel attacked, No, I don't, Well, there's not it's not an attack on the dog.
It's just that these people own that kind of dog.
Well, but there's several breeds though, like we could go through all the red I'm just saying that it's gonna be considered a bird dog, 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've taken this beatn the table 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 whitetail hunter.
I don't think it is box blind.
It is whitetail week cow.
It is not by the time this place 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 contradict. 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. I believe this is true. I believe Hillary Clinton even linked herself to past hunters.
She she famously told stories about.
Going duck hunting growing up. John Kerry, what did he do? 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 his shotgun. So someone was sort of like, probably not best right to have a ton of photos of him with the shotgun, but instead you have a ton of photos of him looking like a country dandy.
Yeah, that's a typical way with carried 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, hunt, someone says, funny, you're not in the database of people who had so then he had to Then he had to be like and he's like, wow, I hunted varmits.
I believe he's I believe you said I hunted varmints and such.
And then you're like, yeah, I wish I had just never even brought this. I wish I'd never even brought this up.
Yeah, the aids are scrambling. Oh boy, no, I think there's a There does exist a compilation of political figure photo ops, like awkward gun handling photo ops out there, and also like fishing, awkward fishing.
You know it exists.
But the dude not a quick thing before we get to the world's most important lawyer in the moment, some keeping it, you.
Know, yeating, exactly, well done.
I want to get them toea cocky, most important lawyer in the moment for the last collection of moments. How many years?
About two? Okay, well I've been a lawyer for seven, but this case.
About Yeah, we're gonna get to that heavy duty. It's good that you're here.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Yeah, can you just quick finish this thought up? The dude that the governor of Colorado is married to he's very outspoken animal rights. Actually yes, and there's.
I mean, whatever, call it rumors, but there's definitely like people that say, well, president's president.
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 home is not an elected official. Well yeah, but I mean I'm just saying, you know, pillow talk right, Yeah, true. You know, when we do our live show in Denver, Yanni invite Polish.
Do we invite him?
No, no, no, But I think that.
That 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 was running, like when he was a state representative. He was our state representative round Bail for a while, and he was very like pro public lands, did a lot to establish like he was doing stuff up at Camp Halee, doing stuff for like getting wilderness areas designated.
Things you liked, things.
I liked, right, But the hunting thing was like not even part of the part of the deal.
So he was he was a good public lands advocate, was not a hunting advocate.
Yeah, but it wasn't like the radar because back then Hick and Looper wasn't anti hunting, like at least in any perceivable way.
I mean you hunted with him, I think no, I would know he definitely wasn't.
Oh he was at the one shot the 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 Wyhoming 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 did it with him. He's a cloud nine the whole time people are coming saying awful stuff to him.
He's just having the time. I was like, this guy's got balls, man.
Yeah, and Polish 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 looper, Like, how how good of a time he was having in a situation that anybody else has been, 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, because 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 that don't think what you think. Yep. Also, the twenty twenty four calendar is out, so if you 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 basically like fucked up old TV personality hunting TV.
And then in twenty twenty five. I'm still thinking fucked up old fish cleaning stations, but that's like heard, I like that one. But fucked up dirtish and boats is good to the dirtiest, nastiest fish cleaning.
Stay sucked up old deer camps.
I know some fish I've talked with tigraphers on They're like, it's hard to capture a dirty fish clean and.
Stay the beauty of a dirty fish.
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 like layers of scale crime. Yeah, when you reach on a 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 that. I don't want to. I don't want to.
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 in politics to name the one's on my mind right now, but it'd have to be scratch and sniff. It's a scratch and sniff calendar.
Were those ones with the grinder in the middle right, like in the July You go, oh yeah, so you're hitting the face and the eyeballs, and.
Then someone throws a fifteen pound channel cat carcass in there and just the grinder locks up and everything.
This grinder, Oh they're a genius, but they don't accept big calfish head, so it pull it grinds everything.
This is a public Oh you throw a bluegill in there.
It doesn't even change tune.
Oh I threw in.
Where do they go they use it for.
Goes into the septic I'm guessing goes into the municipal.
There's a chum pipe out and every lag.
Oh yeah, I mean grinds it. Dude's cool, No, it's genius. There's one.
Uh.
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 that thing has been around a while.
They got them all over Montana, Like 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, 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 very serious. Walleyee. We get up to the fish cleaning station. There's two guides there. You can tell there. You can just tell at what stage of their day they're in stage home and both right, it's like it's late. It was a really cold, windy day out of the Missouri out in 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.
Yea.
So I'm like backpedaling like a free safety Steve and I get to the boat and I like dig out or pack of beer haul ass to the fish cleaning station. Like, hey, guys, look like he had a long day, Dima. You 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, We're gonna do one news item, and this is 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 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 two thousand invasive mule deers roaming the mountains of Santa Catalina Island has ignited a storm of protests among residents of the popular resort destination and prompt the calls for state wildlife officials to block the hunts. Now I've been out there because I went out there because they have a.
Called a hunt.
They have a hunt.
No I know, but they should.
I don't know why they're calling that a hunt. Yeah, 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 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, they're like, damn, this place to 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? Axes 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, and like they weren't complaining about that back now, I understand, but he killed so many of those things. He said, like after a couple of years, he was just like he he was a hunter, and he was just like overwhelmed by the mind.
Yeah, the dirtiest deed I've ever heard of when you're doing goat control on islands. You know about the goot, the Judas goat, I've heard. Yeah, Man, those those guys, those sharpshooter dudes. They'll take a goat right and put a little track and collar on him and let them go go find your bodies. And you wait awhile, and you just know that goat's gonna find the other goats. You know what it is? They stole that idea from Red Dawn. Do you remember that kid's a great and
Red Dawn. That kid went into town. He wasn't supposed to go into town, and the ruskies caught him and they made him swallow that tracking device, and then the Ruskies came for him and they killed all the rooskies, and then they had they got that tracking device, and he's like trying to figure out who in the tracking device leads him right to his third buddy and he shoots them. That's where they got that idea for the Judas go good meal deer hout and see in that
movie too. Oh yeah, 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 biogeography that perhaps keeps you know, grazers off allows islands to develop unique suites of vegetation, right, sometimes unique suites of vegetation that don't exist anywhere else on the planet. But then you move grazers out there, and grazers, you know, graysed down native vegetations. They create a disturbed ecosystem.
You still have people running around, they're introducing non native weeds intentionally accidentally, they're planning 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 cheat grass and melder whatever the hell. 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 axes deer, a lot of people hunt them in love access deer.
A lot of.
People are like, they don't belong here, they're 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 a tricky one for me because I'm always you know, like anybody, I like to see, 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 the 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 gonna they're they're they're fixing to eliminate the mule deer right now. They are allowing uh, right now, they're allowing two hundred of these deer to get one hundred a year, so you can get permits
and hunt two hundred deer a year. But they're looking just to put the kibosh on the whole thing and use helicopters to kill all the year. And some people ain't happy.
They make the hunt very complicated.
They do do know anything about it.
I've looked into you know that.
I didn't know that it existed.
I looked into it well because I had this dream of participating in the hunt while 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's island island oasis. 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 other toads out there.
I have seen.
Some nice sheds on people's shelves and stuff out there, but I'm not sure if they're growing anything like real big. I'm sure it's pretty darn incesty out there, got it. Yeah, And I know there's also just you know, there's not an over abundance of fresh water on the island it.
Yeah, So this is one of those ones. If I live there, I'd be passed it is. It's a thorny one. So come up with your own decisions about that.
Well, the bison are a tourist trap, and that's.
Why I went there when I was working on my Buffalo book. I went, oh, that's wild.
And yeah, I mean the the deer people can they are more available for people to go out and hunt. Harvard can 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 meal deer.
Yeah, and maybe just increase the tags so that so that the native flora can actually handle the pressure.
That's why is that not part of the conversation. If you have two thousand and you're killing ten percent a year, why why not for a while kill twenty percent a year or fifty yeah, or fifty and then and then and then see what the I don't see what the impact is. Well, they're not killing enough. That's solvable. At what point get one? Here's the guy that here's the guy that wants to get one.
It is California, Like, do they really want to.
Use hunting to solve their problem?
You know, 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 doughs.
At one point a buck.
Yeah, there's one hundred dog duran's perking up a bug?
Is that all?
Which I think is probably a lot for I mean, that thing is a desert rock out there.
Yeah, so it seems like one hundred and fifty bison could be eating as much as those two thousand mule deer.
Yeah, it's an easy math to do.
All right. Ryan Samarat the corner 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 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 gonna 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. We'll introduce yourself to that.
Yeah. So my name is Ryan Summerad. I'm an attorney living Casper.
Where were you born.
I'm born in upstate New York, Chenectady. Uh. And in light of your long conversation about the politics of non hunters and visuals, I'll tell you I don't hunt at all.
You don't hunt at all, not at.
All, So just see you.
Yeah, number of did no background research?
Yeah, probably do.
You could probably get some good invites to some hunting camps after this whole mess.
Oh yeah, you got a lot of That was my question.
Have you had opportunity your dec to hunt, like, have you dabbled or you just have never not?
Didn't grow up with it? Mom and dad weren't part of that family, wasn't part of my uncle.
I think I'm a little bit go to law school Ohio States.
So how'd you wind up in it's the yeah you're supposed to say the thing? Uh, so came about a girl. My wife's born raising Casper. You meet her at Ohio State. She's a lawyer too.
There was a law dog and all the time.
Yeah yeah, actually her and her firm assisted on the case. Really yeah yeah, no hunting, no hunting, no hunting at all. Yeah, huh yeah.
Uh but 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.
But uh, what do you think about that island out there in California? Yeah, what'd you take?
Well?
I mean, you know, eradicating from a helicopter seems a little ungamely on sports after sports? Uh, but yeah, I mean I think they should let colg hunt a little bit.
I think leg.
That's a perspective, that's a perspective.
Problem is with these guys. You got to pay a lot just for a letter that says they recommend that.
Yeah, well that's a that's a freebie for you.
They call that pro bono.
Well, yeah, so about this corner crossing things. So I guess I want to do a little more background. Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure.
You meet you're in law school, you meet another law school. Do you guys call each other candidates?
Classmates?
Randall here has got a pH d. He probably told you about that, didn't He cal called them doctor told uh, okay, So you're in law school, you meet your wife. She's in law school, and at some point she says, I would like to get back. 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 day every Friday? There I was, He's back, but now I was just going to visit her and wanted to. We weren't even engaged at the time, 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 twenty seventeen. And funny, just funny story getting out there. I actually my wildlife experience. Here's my wildlife experience. You're ready for it. There were friends we had in Vegas. They had two turtles, Bonnie and Claus. 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 transport and Clyde
back to Bonnie. Uh.
So I drove.
Had I had him in a little plastic container, a little bit of water, and he was sitting in the passenger shoes just me.
Me and Clyde to him and be like, so, what are you gonna say when you see her?
That's right? A buddy movie?
Yeah, yeah, So we we drew 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 uh Chevy Cruise I had, and coming through Frisco. One of my windshow wipers stopped working, so I had to kind of stick my head. It's hard to snow. It was in May, but it was snowing going up the mountains, and.
Thought being a lawyer was supposed to be a lot. Transfer broke down the turtle.
Yeah, so I broke down in Utah and somebody came gave me a lyft tow truck driver and I'm sitting there now in the tow truck with me and me and Clyde and uh and then uh yeah, we 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 tow truck drivers. Like, let me tell you about people from another podcast.
Right now, this guy with the turtle. Yeah, this bitch gets out he's got a turtle. Yeah, that's right.
He claims to me that he's reuniting the turtle.
True story. I got photos.
But yeah, uh so then 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 our to have a kid, we were like, well, we don't we want to move back closer to some family, and so we decided to go back closer to her
family and Casper, and we moved. It was like the first week of March twenty twenty, really interesting time in the world. And yeah, we moved to Casper and I've been there ever since. But that 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.
And then my firm is basically me. So what's it called Fuller and Samarad?
Who's Fuller?
Don Fuller is my law partner.
Okay, yeah, yeah, all right, So now you can do one or two things up to you, sure lawyer's choice. You either explain how this how this whole thing came to you or you explain what it is. But whatever order, both those things are gonna 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 out. I'll try to help you out. I can do it, you can, you know, I'll 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. Checkerboard was a you know, it's where you played chess, the door checkers. I guess it's that's that's really That's really all I
knew about it. So, uh, yeah, it was November December of twenty one and I got a call from another attorney in town who said, hey, uh, one of those corner hoppers needs another attorney and you want to do it. And I said to myself, what, what the fuck is corner hopping? What do you what are you talking? 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 employed 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 and Casper kind of I don't want to touch.
Well, well, no, why didn't he want it?
So no, he he did. He represented one of the hunters, but 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, that kind of puts you in a bad spider. Where do you guys use snitch? We call it proffering. Yeah, in the business, you'd say, my client's interested in proffering. God, that's the other side's kind.
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 reg 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 are not we're conflicted, you know if I have an interest? Yeah yeah, But.
It's not a defense strategy, it's just a it's just a practice that's generally.
Kind of both ways because it does put you in a bad spot if if you were to represent everybody, unless everybody's going to agree, you know, it's all for one,
one for all, and we're not gonna cross swords. But you just you know, it's really hard to put yourself in that position where yours everybody Yeah, 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 jump in on one of them, though I knew nothing about it.
I not gonna turn down business.
Yeah, and it was a good friend of mine, so I was like, yeah, absolutely, I'll help for sure a report. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So I jumped in and one of the first things I did is call I mean, 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, Ryan, the guy with the turtle, Yeah, that's right, Hey, I got I gotta I got a question for you.
So so I call a buddy actually, 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 about access and how it used to be and if if you wanted to hunt somewhere but you knew that there was some private land or there was a
ranch or whatever. You could go contact the owner of that property or whoever's at the ranch manager say look, hey, 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 and kind of pay to play that. Okay, you're either going to use our outfitter 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, the checkerboard, which is alternating public in 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 that.
Okay, I mean I know the answer, but oh yeah, what was the answer?
Cal can you?
Of course you can't walking in public.
Plan 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 always but I.
Don't want to derail yourself.
No no, no, no, no, no no no. I mean when I think about this access generally or private 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 find and here I find myself with the hunters and the property loss.
But that 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, and I've always been And so when there's a question of Okay, can I cross this corner? Sure, there's there's there's legal, and there's the philosophical side of you know,
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? I damaging them? Am I going to do that? You know? 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, and civil is supposed to not have that necessary, necessarily, that component to it. So that's kind of the way I looked at it.
Yeah, whatever, it's all that. Yeah, Yeah, I give It's.
Like he's a good lawyer, he's got a strong argument.
Yeah, she's going to law Yeah.
Well yeah, So so you have that kind of basic situation.
If you want to know more about the history of the check reboard or whatever. I'm happy to tell you. But the way it really erupted in this instance is these three, originally two Missouri hunters, were hunting elsewhere in Wyoming in twenty nineteen and passed through Carbon County near Elk Mountain. And I have to say it because I just love the phrase. And Phil Yeoman's my client in the criminal case, said it in his deposition in the civil case. You know why what attracted you about Elk
Mountain that area? And he said it, and his deposition is great, looked Elkie. That's what he said. He said that, and we all left. Yeah, yeah, established this fact, that's what he said.
Objection, Yeah, I found the bunch grass load.
To be And so they just looked around, no one was there, and thought it looked Elki and they were like, well,
we got to figure this out. So they go home and they apply for a tag and it's going to be at In twenty twenty, it was Phil Yeoman's, Brad Cape and Zach Smith, those three guys alone, and they went out and they hunted 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. Just can't do it. And so
their perspective was, we can't. 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 fourteen. Section twenty four is kind of the that's the primary access point to the southeast portion facing southeast 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 TE post was. The answer is gonna be no to most of this stuff. So stuff that I've learned.
Education.
Yeah, it's been an educational thing. Two T posts, two tposts have no trespassing signs on them with a phone number and 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. It's kind of you get to the front door of a club and the bouncer has that velvet little rope, so it'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 is. That's just real weird, so strange out in the middle of nowhere, so 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 t posts and swung their body from the one square of public land to the next square public land without touching the private on either side, and went on their business.
And then they used on X their eyes and located the rest of the actual us OR survey stakes at each corner and just crossed over those corners to proceed onward hunted. And it was a pretty successful hunt because 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 other elk. I think they only hunted elk that year and we have an audio recording of it. Actually we got through discovery.
Do you have to say, can you explain field dress?
Look, I'm using the term I don't even think I still know what So if it sounds clunky, that's it's like I'm speaking Germany for the first But yeah, so that we have an audio recording of it, and ranch manager approaches him basically says, like what he made.
The audio recording Zach Smith, Yeah, just.
Because he had a feeling like this wasn't going to be a pleasant thing.
Yeah.
Yeah, Yeah.
So if 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 the recording too, because they they say just as much to it. Was Steve Grendi, 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 them exactly what they had been doing. And and they were on a section of public land at that time during that initial interaction, and and so he basically says, you it's it's illegal to corner across.
You can't do it. I'm gonna have to report you to the authorities and so forth. So that 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 Kaufman stuff them.
He did. We had say that's exactly what he wanted, and that did not happen. The Sheriff's deputy did interact with the 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 twenty twenty. 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 te post, that's a trespass. You touch that tea post, you make contact with our property, that's that's your trespass. So that's stuck in their head like, well that's a problem, that's his big problem. We'll solve that. Because you see Brad is a fence builder by trade.
So he that's one of my favorite details.
Yeah, so he is.
My favorite details of this whole thing is he's in the fencing business.
Yeah yeah, so he so he builds Fancy's plants, a tea post. He knows how this work. He knows exactly how high a tea post is.
This is a movie, like, oh right.
It's like a heist movie where they get all the all the guy specialized skills together.
Yeah. Yeah.
Can you imagine like the Great Wall of China, right, and like the Mongol Horde coming up to the edge and one guy in the hoard being like, you know why that doesn't intimidate me? Wall builder by trade?
Yeah yeah. So so to to Brad, 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 posts or the chain because that seems to be the problem. And we want to go back because it's Elkie and it's fun hunting and there's no one else there and lots of public land, so 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 and.
I can I ask quick questions? Yeah, when the sheriff comes out and he susses everything out and they leave it that that okay, You're cool. Uh. The ranch manager does not act. He is not an agreement.
Well, he was very upset that that time around.
He was upset that he wasn't like, oh, thanks for the clarification, My bad.
No, 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.
He felt that they would follow up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was his perspective. So twenty one comes around, Brad fabricates his ladder. They continue to do their homework and nothing has changed. They the law side of it, They think everything is exactly the same as it was in twenty twenty. Were 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 they're The big issue with Grendee was touching the tea posts will build the ladder. They go back, they get tags, and they go back to hunting twenty one and they bring a fourth person this time, and as John Slowinsky and I'm telling you, you say the cinematic quality of this thing. So he got Brad the fence builder. Zack Smith works
for Brad building fences. Phil Yeomans, if I get this right, I believe is married to Brad's sister, or maybe John's married to Brad's sister. John Slewinsky is a director of a band out of 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 dy or he repairs delivery trucks for a chip company, Freedo La or
something like that. This is the crew. They come back out in the fall twenty one, same story, but they got the ladder. So they walk up to the first corner, they 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 twenty same story, except this time Steve Grundian 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 that absolutely, just for listener's sake. Yeah, the ranch manager, acting as a representative of the ranch, they are 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 as 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's a lot to defend here from the position of the landowner is defending a side 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 to work 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.
How we misture ourselves could have.
Ramifications, meaning it could ben You know, we got a problem. Our assumption about our day facto ownership of this ground is tenuous. It's it's the laws 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 and we should handle our you know, play our cards in an effective fashion here because this is this is not good.
I mean, they went so far as to say this would affect the value of the property.
Yeah, it's real important to get to that later.
Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. And it's funny. 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 in 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.
But the listing pointed out yes, yeah, so the purchaser, if the purchaser, say, say an individual such as yourself, not schooled in these issues, a purchaser might have 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 they in their mind they have a property right yeah.
And and in fact, that's that's what came out later in the case, when we were deposing doctor Fred Ashman, 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, and so he didn't finish the sentence with and so I had exclusive access to everything. But obviously that's the implication.
If 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 one hundred percent, that's and that is it. I mean, we always called it the first corner. Section fourteen and twenty four 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 it tascit acknowledgment. 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 fourteen. 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.
And that's what these guys did, both in twenty and twenty one, and then twenty one obviously just led to this because twenty one 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 yeah, neighboring state would love to ask them 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 game and Fish, they're 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 trespassed to hunt. That is, they
have jurisdiction to issue that citation. But when it comes to regular ole criminal trespass that is not that's under Title six. It's a regular crime, and so game and fish can 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 here whatever.
They got a 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. Very abnormal for sure, and so yeah that ultimately after they go hunting in twenty one.
Sorry, I gotta pause right now, regular old game warden sitting there on a county road in plane view, which is a term where you learned yesterday from a game organ from 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 officer of the law doesn't have to act on anything there because it's not within their realm of things they can act on.
Yeah.
So, 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 on the law. There's the law that's on the paper, and then there's the law on 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 gonna do anything. The sheriff's deputy is going to write a report and leave it to the d A.
Well, I mean specific, 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 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, And I'm not gonna him all these citations if he's going to be like, man, I'm not waiting into that.
And I'll tell you from my conversations with county county attorneys across the state of Wyoming, it very very few have any interest whatsoever in citing anyone for corner crossing. In fact, i've had at least four or five and 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 would I tell anyone to be cited for that, let alone prosecuted to trial.
Yeah, because if they know, they're just opening themselves up to a very confusing, like potentially like case that just drags on and gets muddy like this one, or they lose, yeah, like this one.
Right, And I do want to kind of move past the criminal case because that that's the saga, that's the the story. They went hunting again in twenty one. They used the latter 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 as kind of a tack on to the criminal case.
It just real quick with the criminal case. Yeah, just the results.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, well the results of the criminal case. So we took the thing to trial 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 we didn't went on that, but we went to a jury trial. Jerry returned a verdict in just a little under two hours, not guilty.
How hard was jury selection? Did you throw out landowners?
We did not throw out landowners. We did throw out a couple of people who had some business connections to this landowner because they candidly were like, well, we just don't really know how that's gonna work for us.
If there were happened to be a fence builder. No, no, so we we 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 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 trespass, which is very interesting. Just was there hunters on the jury? I think yes, there was at the four person Foreman was a hunter. Yeah. Uh, And if I remember correctly, the four person 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 gonna 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 want to even get near it. And my thought process was, Oh, this guy, 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 so I thought they were
going to knock him out for sure. And then when we kept going back and forth knocking Jerors out and he kept sticking along, I just think, just let him stay, and sure enough he's our four person.
Yeah, because 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 where he 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 a not guilties on for all four guys on two different theories of trespass. Deliberation was all 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. 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, Jerry Jurors would not talk to anybody, wouldn't talk to reporters, wouldn't talk to us. So no, don't know, don't know what went on there. And then interestingly, during jury's selection, three of the three guys from twenty twenty were issued citations by the sheriff's deputy for the twenty twenty hunt, like we know.
Where those guys are.
Yeah, it was. It was really bizarre because there were jurors in the room when the sheriff handed them citations up right at the beginning of trial. I don't remember what for the twenty twenty hunt, same thing hunt. Yeah, he served them with citations for during jury selection.
But then did that trespass case get rolled into the same trespass case.
No, no, no, So it was 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, play for the.
Next Yeah, I mean so thankfully that went away. What do you think the their reasoning there was for 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. 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
because 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. It's not relevant. It's kind of a weird angle that took place, but it got sorted. But yeah, 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 other attorney who I had not known before, said, Hey, I represent the ranch. We're suing your guys for trespass. You guys gonna accept service? Or do I have to go serve them with papers? Really it's a fun email to receive.
For sure, I'd 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 letters like state the nature of their civil suit or it just said we're starting a civil suit against.
These It actually attached the complaint, which is the case initiating document for the civil suit. So so we saw what the claim was, and so we accepted service.
And ultimately you didn't know the dollar figure at that time.
No, Nope, didn't did not know. Did not know. And that's an interesting.
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 if you trespass. You know the example I use because something that rings true to me. He used to play a lot of whiffleball in my parents' backyard when I was a kid. And you'd hit the ball of
the fence. Yeah yeah, and uh, you hop the fence, go get the whiffleball, and you're in your neighbor's yard for five seconds, and you grab the ball, you go back. Well, is that trespass technically, Yeah, he didn't ask for permission. You're on their property. That's trespass. Is it twenty five percent of the value of their house worth of trespass?
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 I'd be richie.
Yeah, there'd be a lot of cross counter suits. There's a lot of counter suits among the various families with kids.
Yeah, right, right, right, So so I just in that instance, you could get if you really want to sue, you get nominal damages, which is it's always some ten dollars, twenty dollars, fifty dollars 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 followed their case in state cour 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, this is my theory, this is the way I want I
think we should do this. And so it all kind of shook out that the guys were like, all right, we're gonna use you do the civil case for us, like we all four because I can do all four of them in a civil case. So they were like, yeah, you do the civil case. 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 isn't it's a Wyoming company and we are Missouri residents. Well, technically it's got North Carolina City and ship that company. Because it's an LLC, it 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 seventy five thousand dollars. 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 and 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 sixteen point twenty two million or whatever it was, property, then certainly it's that much is at issue, so take our case. And interesting, but you guys came up with the number at first at first, and interest is it was a challenge, Yeah, because we want to take to federal court. We said, look, their complaining that we're messing with the 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 said, look, they haven't shown the amountain controversy. We didn't say the amountain controversy was that much. You know, there's no federal questions here, just a regular old trespassed 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 state in federal court, which was huge, And then we
tried to it's 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, not yet, not yet, because that that would come later. We lost that motion of 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 trespass
using the Unlawful Enclosures Act. I do think that you have the ability to defend yourself if 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 deface.
Oh I can't. I'm not going to dismiss it. But that's a that's an arguable point.
Yes, yeah, he said, 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 lose the battle, but win the war. All day long. So that's okay, and it set me back, but it still give me the path. So no, it 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. I was in my
car now with the turtle now now just me. Uh, maybe I was driving back from like a weird little assault trial I had in Rawlins or something. I remember.
I sounds like a country song.
You've driven through Rollins, right, Yeah, weird.
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 it was honking his horn. Oh and 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 side too, and so he wanted to try the case because he's like, no, I'm the victim, So Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, we went, we had a trial, we won that trip. Yeah. And then as I was driving back and I got this ping on my phone and it was the initial disclosures document from the ranch. And that's the first time they've got to say what they think their damages are and.
Trying to read that while you drive, and yeah, take a peek.
Well, I didn't read all their crazy attachments, but 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 starts off simple ten dollars for damages, and then it starts then it gets weird three point one million to seven point seventy five million for actual damages arising from defendant's conduct colon ten percent to twenty five percent diminution of value of the real property parentheses, subject to revision. And I I just kind of I couldn't I couldn't quite understand exactly. I think I liked it on one hand, because they conceded the amount in 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 gonna show show this because 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 there, you know, 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 way. If there's some little premium that their property enjoys because no one can corner cross, well that premium is false, had 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 about my house tale as old as time. Yeah, So they're like, like the value is 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 uh the landowners 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.
Uh, but you know what I mean, Like, 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 everything inside this place is black mold, right. Do I go, you know what, mister contractor, 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, But it just felt like so miss It felt so misassigned. So the blame, I think.
That that's that's absolutely right. It's definitely missed as signed 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, hey, look, people are going to try it, I guess, but they can't.
And I'm going to win this. I'm gonna stamp it out and I'm gonna throw out these numbers because I want to show how serious I am about how I value this, 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, you know, 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 believing. 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, you know, getting close to ten million dollars.
What's in your accounts right now?
Yeah, Yeah, not not a fun conversation at all.
But I'm just trying to So I'm just trying to get the law. I don't want to stop you because you're doing a great job. We'll explain a whole thing, 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 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 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.
Their loss of pocket knife. To those guys, you look me in the eye, Well, I know they haven't found your pocket knife.
I've never bought a pocket knife, but.
Everyone at this table can a test to their effectiveness a pocket knife detection.
I straight shotgun shells. Well, I think their stats when they do their quality control are not very good. But with stuff that can actually get through. Yeah, yeah, but but yeah.
I'm not joking. We've all lost knives of those people, but go on.
Yeah.
But but so I think that the concept was if I throw out this is how serious it is. It's ten million, seven point seven five million dollars worth of damages, do not even think about it. That was the That was the message to everybody.
It's peacocky, 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 no that that's 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 No? No, no, you're reading it exactly right. 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 recognizing the legality of corner crossing, they're in some conspiracy to just have everybody run amook on the ranch and commit just serial after cereal 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 know, that's good, yeah, yeah, yeah, satisfies Yeah.
But I 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're parked up by the house and.
Act why don't you park up at the ranch house and would have liked to keep this spot a secret as well?
I mean that they wouldn't.
That's the real victim here. These guys are spots alone.
Yeah, it would be a pumpkin patch up there.
Yeah.
What in a civil trial, what is the damage amount assigned to losing a good hunting spot?
Ten million?
Because you blew this whole thing up now it looks like that, Like you know, I was trying to make this analogy for you know that famous photo of people trying to get to the Klondike gold Field and you're climbing up that pass out of Whittier. That's what that ladder looks like right now going into this golden something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. I said that that whole question was just straight, and it got stranger still because as the case progressed, they got an expert who was gonna who opined about this diminution and value of corner crossing is legal, and that was how he based the opinion too. It wasn't like, oh, my opinion is based on what the footfalls of these four hunters in twenty and twenty twenty one 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 if you ranch. And he even went higher. He said that the diminution of value could be as high as like thirty percent, just because that's he knows selling ranches, and this is how hard it would be. So then so that I guess
the damn just 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 and you say corner crossing is illegal or that these guys committed a trespass and the way that they did their corner crossing, Uh, will drop our damages, we won't ask for any money, and they can keep on. And this went to the court. Yeah,
they filed this with the court. They filed that with the court and they said, I, if you if you ruin our favor, we're not asking for any money, we won't ask for anything. But they waited until right before.
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 don't know if it was too if it was an active diplomacy and it was like bringing the beer to the guys at the fish clean the 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 so what was that presented to 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, were we're going to drop this or we're not going to even go for all.
But then are your clients notified of this of this question?
Yeah, oh yeah, no, yeah, 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 he never he never had to wait, he's never forced to weigh in.
On now, I did not have to weigh in on that. That that that side of it. Yeah. So we go through that whole discovery phase, collecting evidence and whatnot through and in March of twenty three, I think, maybe no April fifteenth of twenty three, and then we all filed competing motions saying you don't need to have a trial
in this case. We win for this reason, and they filed their corresponding motion, and then we had a summary judgment hearing on those motions on May tenth of twenty three and made our arguments directly to Jude Scavdal and kind of he questioned us, peppered us. He's a very prepared judge, and he was ready, and he had lots of questions for everybody, and then we waited, and then it was kind of okay.
Well, give me a sense of 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 twenty thirty seven I've got the transcript somewhere, but I spoke for maybe twenty thirty 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. And they have a right to exclude people from their property, and that
includes the super adjacent airspace above their property. So when they crossed 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, and so so yeah, you'd get those questions. He asked about the damage this
thing too. He kind of had the similar question that we've all been wrestling around with with, like, well, damned if you do, damned if you don't, how do I how do I reconcile that 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 of weeks. I think his decision came out on May twenty third, if I'm not mistaken, And so we waited two weeks just about to get a ruling. And when he issued that for 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 and the checkerboard, and when they do that. They cannot touch the private land, they cannot damage the private land and the private land or 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 his airspace mean and how do we divvy it up?
How can he to get to Tom mcguain 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 Mackay. It was sheep herder was trailing his sheep through the checkerboard and landowner and similar case actually because he was prosecuted criminally and suited civilly and the court said it's not it's not civil trespass to eat 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.
Reason sheep ladder, Yeah, no, I'd be way to fall asleep at night picture sheep going over that ladder.
Yeah.
So so he hung his hat on that and that 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, uh, 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 to say airplanes are not trespassing on private property when they're flying overhead. But there was kind of this threshold of you know, some undetermined amount of space above the land that a private land or has the 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. And that was what we hung our hat on, is to say, look, if they're gonna go with an airspace trespass whatever, well, they weren't using the wide open range land airspace or or the land itself at all other than their teposts, and we weren't interfering with that non use of that land,
so it's not an actionable trespass. That's that was our response then, and it didn't really become super crucial at that in skyt Doll's ruling, But it's something we'll have to address when we get to the appeal for sure.
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 scaped All'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 ramping over my land. I actually don't know what the current status so that is. I don't know people have been corner crossing or not because have.
You been out there?
Have you driven out to the ven? I've driven through, but I've never been out to the corner. I've never been. I want to go I do. I want to go right to that corner. I really really.
Don't feel like when this is all settled, the band director should bring his marching band out.
Zero appetite. I would have zero appetite to hop that corner man.
Just like but.
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. So like if you're if your point of view is purely just hunting, it's not going to be to this very known place now, right. But I just made a really interesting observation, and Ryan and I were talking about it because I drove out to Buffalo, Wyoming.
T RCP and b h A 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 uh, Maggie Hudlow went to a couple for us too, and kind of in the hopes that something really dramatic would happen really that we could, you know, put on the website and talk about. 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, 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.
A bunch of proxy arguments.
Yeah.
Yeah, My interest in it, my interest in the subject, which is deep, has mostly always stemmed from how could something like this be unclear? Like of something of like such huge ramification and such squabbling and loss, Like how could I'm sure, because you work in the law, you probably were of a lot of things that are unclear. But I'm like, how in the world is this not even the world is this unclear?
Even going all the way back to when they came up with this checkerboard system, they weren't like.
Huh, someone someone that the railroad back in eighteen ninety year, what aver the hell wouldn't have been?
You know what?
I keep thinking about since they gave us every other section. But it's like criss cross someday.
But that that is the genesis of the Unlawful Enclosures Act, was to address uh people, landowners and to tease trying to strategically purchase and and block off other chunks.
And it would be 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.
And I'm sure in a lot of cases too, 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.
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 overtime, 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 like, Oh, it's just you know, it's just been decided. But in learning that it hasn't been decided, 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 access 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.
Upset something that had been If it was just always a settled thing and you wanted to overturn.
It, Yeah, it won't be like me and being mad about four hundred square inches of Hunter's orange, I'd like to overturn that. I would never have sought to overturn this because it would have been how I would have just accepted it as like that's just the way things are by.
You would have accepted it the same way you accept a private property.
Line I would never think. I would never be you know, can they really do that? Right? I'm going to go back to the beginning of time and find out if they can really do that.
And 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 and I pulled it up just because it's funny and it fits. That's how the Supreme Court, at least one justice thought
about it to one time. This case made this kind of issue, made it all the way to the Supreme Court called Leo Sheep and just Leo Sheep animal ye Sheep being the animal Leo Sheep Company versus United States, and so a thirdgood Marshall actually said during oral arguably yeah, he said 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. Hmmm, that was his question nineteen seventy nine, No, kidd, Yeah.
Is that where this is headed? Supreme Court? Look, what's the pathway? Was the legal pathway?
Yeah, so we suck the case to federal court. We kept it in federal court. We won it in federal court. Now they're appealing to the Tenth Circuit. That's the next part of the dance. The Tenth Circuit is the Federal Court of Appeals that governs Wyoming in a few other spots.
But now it goes beyond Justice Skalbdaal correct.
Yeah, yeah, so judgment.
And I say that because when his opinions on the stays, so when the motion for it for a stay was denied, Justice that remained with Justice Scalvedall. Justice Scalvedell wrote his opinion as to why he would deny the stay, and in those opinions, there's a lot of things that I took is like very very positive for a pro public right to access public round standpoint.
But now.
I imagine those opinions will be considered by a higher court. Yes, but it won't be Justice Scalvedall. His opinion is on paper right now, and he won't be the judge of this again.
Correct, Yeah, that's that's right. So so Judge Scavdal issues his decision down below everything that we've been talking about. He also says, I'm not going to stay that order. I'm not gonna 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 Tenth Circuit.
The Tenth 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 Tenth Circuit. They will review Judge Scavdaal'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 gonna present arguments on paper, We're gonna probably have oral argument in front of them to the review. 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.
There are no no, no, there is an appeal. They're gonna they're gonna make a decision one way or another, probably won't have that till next year sometime. 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. Wow, so that's we're 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 and 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 appellet lawyer, and I when I was in law school, I was pretty nerdy. You can ask my wife. I used to go on runs and listen to Supreme Court arguments on my headphones and I I applied to be admitted to the Supreme Court last summer. Yeah, because I was at a feeling I've wanted a case to go and I've wanted to do it for this kind of one of my goals. So no, this is what I want to do. So I'm excited it's happening, and there's I'm excited that there's
the 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 your.
Oh way to the Supreme Court. Can we come down to record from the Supreme Court. But what do you think Justice Roberts Steve can be?
Can you ask a question?
We get a couple more chairs 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, Ke, Oh yeah, just before you move on and Steve, you have a heart out in twenty minutes. I just want to throw that out my ears.
Saga you want 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 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 Ironbar 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, Okay, 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, 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 iron Bar case. And especially it's not civil trespass, no way, absolutely not civil trespass, because that's what iron Bar 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 many how much appetite right now? How much appetite would even be to cite somebody knowing the depths that you're waiting into.
All I can say is that there have been at least four or five current county and deputy county prosecutors across the state of Wyoming that I have seen since the decision came out who have all slapped me on the back and congratulated me. 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, people know about this. Whether a prosecutor is going to be willing to say, you know, I'll take the bull by the horn and let's 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 it a nudendum for you hunters out there and mushroom pickers and whatnot, This was a surveyed corner. M Okay, pay really close attention to the words sufficiently, careful, non damaging corner crossing. This is a surveyed corner where the exact location of this corner has been certified.
Right.
Fences just the existence of fences do not necessarily denote the location of property lines.
And I'd like to add to that, your on X is unfortunately not going to be to the specifically agree that you're that you're talking about.
It's going to get you in the ballpark.
But you need to pin. And this is not a I mean, the app I use most in life, outside of probably my text app is on X. I I wouldn't want to live without on X. 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.
Well, and it's not just the app. I mean, it's just the the techno. It's not like specific to on X.
It's how much so, I mean, it's it's a very requisition of your and the Justice Govdal'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 plan? Lawyer Ryan, I like you 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 landowner, which we could get into 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.
In this.
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 were 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 then 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 fill their middle finger up in the air and start willing, nearly jumping over fences corner fences. Yes, and in the in this judges order, not where that's not where this sits right now. There.
If this becomes clarified, there will be My prediction is there will be a lot of attention paid to strategically locating important corners, and there's a way that this will play out.
But this is how they got to raise some money to get these pisiness.
Like you out arguing with you are arguing with with landowners and ranchers about what you don't own those elk Yeah, where their fence and it's just it's just not how this needs to gop Do.
You need to read the opinion in the stay, because I mean, it's very clear that all the things that we've read in the paper and 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 Skobdal, some of which included like Steve was saying, wave in your middle finger.
Uh.
It alludes to the fact that there were calls to Iron Bar Holdings and some some veiled threats and probably just some some fuck us. But that actually made it into the justice's opinion, So you.
Gotta he didn't ignore that, did not.
Ignore that, took it into consideration because Iron Bar's counsel brought those points up, because you know that would be an issue to order a stay of opinion, is if it was thought by the judge that there were going to be some physical ramifications that could hurt somebody if the stay wasn't issued. Kind of kind of crappy, but more or less right there, Ryan, Well.
No, I think that. I think that just just just so people know, because if I was listening to this, you know, while I was trying to work on something by garage, I might have missed this. But stay is when the decision gets made, but they know it's gonna be appealed, so they they basically come in and say, here's my decision, but we're gonna stay on like nothing. I'm not changing anything yet because I'm gonna wait for
the appeals process to play out. So we're not gonna act on what I've decided, but that's my decision, and then we're gonna 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 the note the stay was denied.
But I'm saying if everybody was out there having fistfights and stuffly you might be like, you know what, okay, never mind, everybody, stop, the stay is in place. This is getting out of hand. We're gonna, you know, yeah, it down the road.
And and and and to to just echo everything you guys have been saying, you gotta find the survey stake. You've got to physically find it with your eyes and and you've got to cross it carefully. Use use you can use on X or a compass to help direction yourself and orient your sottle orient 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 it's survey steak because because that has to be a thing. Oh, it happens, for sure, because because you know, the old survey steaks were dinosaur bones or whatever they found in the field, and they would just pone it and they just pount it into the ground and now they are these like uniforms, you know,
stainless steel or whatever. They are called monument Every now and then you trip on the verb is the verb is monumenting because because in the 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 steaks, the survey steak is always perfect in the law does not matter even if it is wrong. The survey steak
is monumented. It is correct. It is always correct. So yeah, you should notify feel on field office and maybe they can get a resurveyed or something like that.
You know, you know, when you hear the term down to brass tacks, you want to know what my understanding of that is? Caps right there is yeah that if you wanted to get really a survey buddy told me it's 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 tax is there's like a circle and within that you can place a
clarifying pin. You can place a tack into that. If for greater clarification around that. Whatever the hell one inner and inch circles. I don't know.
It may be true, some people say people are saying people are or 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 happens to say, exactly where you were.
We found one in Alaska recently, and I could not picture the person who'd like gotten there and then figured that out and drove that into ground.
Right. Oh yeah, they had been thinking like who.
Absolutely, yeah, because there are just obvious places where even you know, one hundred years ago, one hundred and fifty years ago, were you have this mindset of like, oh, yeah, the tax base is coming, this is all going to be home.
Standd.
There are plenty of places where you are standing you're like, not this place.
Yeah, I get it, get it, I get it. No one is ever gonna come look for this. This is never gonna wind up being a thing where people are standing here.
Arguing little did they know?
All right, well thanks for coming on, man, Yeah, absolutely, can you come back when something happens.
Happy to do it.
Oh and what what a timeline?
So I go down to the Supreme Court with you?
You can yeah? There there's you gotta get in line. There's public seating, and there's limited.
Right up there with you.
What I can do?
I got an ear thing, So I gotta timeline one more time.
Yeah, yeah, So the 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. From them, they will filew the first brief, UH should be November sixth. Then we will file an answering brief, either sometime in December or later, depending on if we need more time. Then they will get one more crack at responding to our brief, and then it'll be up to the Tenth 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.
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. Yeah, to be like, at some point someone's gonna have a question for me.
I think there's a lot of real estate agents around the country.
I was looking at a little bit.
I mean I saw a property listing the other day that probably has a brilliant where you're like 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 there's one up by us, and it's like part of the benefit of our h o A, which is another evil, freaking entity that I would love to see burn.
On the ground.
I had no idea. I will never make that mistake, man.
Yeah, but there's one in Anus. It's like part of the benefit of our h o A 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, your sons of bitches, all right.
Thanks for coming on, man. So in the meantime you probably have to do all this stuff too, right, You got other clients, absolutely, Yeah, once you plug your law firm. Uh Fuller and Sammarad we're in Casper. Uh gifts call three h seven. So what kind of trouble, what kind of trouble. Are you looking for down there?
Anything? I mean?
I I like divorce.
I like to fight.
I don't like to stop ass kickings.
I do trucks stop ass kickings.
Were joking a chaser?
No, I try to avoid that too. I just I like to fight.
So what's your favorite? What's what's the best call you can get?
Defense of any kind? I like doing those, like helping criminals out. Do you? I like helping people steel.
You're 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.
Do you ever do that kind of work?
Oh?
Yeah, yeah, get a lot of that. Got a trial coming up from cody in November, so I'll be off doing that.
And you do child custody.
I try to avoid it, have done it, but I try to avoid it. I don't like that stuff. Yep, that's not as much fun.
So 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 if your law dog and it's in Wyoming, yep, Wyoming, that's where it's.
At, you're gonna get just raked over the coals by not using the a your for your alma longer.
You know that the Ohio state, Yeah, I know, I know.
I don't know about I don't understand this, but I don't have tos. I never get my continues to be a problem.
Oh all.
Right on, all the seal gray shine like silver in the sun.
Right right along.
Sweetheart, were done beat this damn horse to death.
Taking a new one. Ride.
We're done beat this damn horse today, So take a new one and ride on.