Nearly 900,000 acres of Montana in access limbo – By Amanda Eggert (Montana Free Press) / March 17, 2024
When four hunters used a specially constructed ladder to step from one corner of public land in southern Wyoming to another, the ripples from that decision were initially small but have since ignited an impassioned debate that could open — or unequivocally restrict — access to more than eight million acres of public land across the West. Here, in the second of the Montana Free Press’ three-part series, we explore why Montana lacks a clear “test case” on the legality of corner-crossing. Nearly a decade before four Missouri Hunters drove to Wyoming for a now-famous hunting trip that landed them before state and federal judges on trespassing charges, Bozeman-based hunting personality Randy Newburg planned something similar. Like the Missouri hunters, Newburg was going to use a ladder to avoid stepping on private property as he corner-crossed, or climbed over the point where two-square-mile sections of public land meet two-square-mile sections of private land.
Newburg, who stars in a hunting-themed TV show and podcast, said he picked a “high-profile” corner in central Montana’s Crazy Mountains involving a wealthy, access-adverse landowner’s property that, once crossed, opened access to thousands of acres of U.S. Forest Service land with plentiful elk hunting. An accountant by trade, Newburg even worked out a script to guide his interactions with the property’s ranch manager.
“I was going to call the county sheriff [and] the landowner and say, ‘This is what I’m doing opening morning,’” he recalled.
