On Wednesday Montana’s lieutenant governor Kristen Juras presented to a group of state lawmakers, civil servants, and a few members of the public on the legal status of corner crossing. Juras concluded what Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks had already announced in November: that stepping from one corner of federal land to another is unlawful in the state of Montana.
Her presentation, which included a 32-slide deck outlining her position, was met with mixed responses. Almost everyone who spoke afterward — regardless of their support for, or opposition to, corner crossing — asked for clarity on the actual laws.
The subsequent discussion ranged from airspace laws to emminent domain. One key point of contention was whether corner crossing is truly illegal in Montana, or if Juras’ statements simply reflected her interpretation of property and trespass law in the state. Juras is a former professor of property law at the University of Montana School of Law, and a supporter of private property rights.
The overwhelming reaction to Juras’ presentation was “confusion,” says president and CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Ryan Callaghan, who attended Wednesday’s meeting of the Montana’s Environmental Quality Council. During the committee’s two-day session in Helena this week, council members discussed everything from fire suppression to mule deer management. Juras’ remarks were framed as the final word on corner crossing, according to EQC chair Rep. Paul Fielder.
“My purpose with asking Lieutenant Governor Juras to present today, I feel, has been accomplished because we’ve heard what the law is in Montana,” Fielder said at the end of the corner crossing discussion, shutting down further debate. “If other people have other interpretations of it, even if it’s a judge, I don’t value the opinion of all these judges. I think they make some poor opinions myself. And that’s my opinion.”
That’s not how the law works, say several stakeholders and experts who attended the meeting.
“What happened today, people need to know that’s an opinion,” Callaghan tells Outdoor Life. “There were lots of words without directly addressing [corner crossing]. And the reality is that they can’t, because it’s against Montana law to just create a law in that fashion.”
Or put another way, just because Juras announced that corner crossing is illegal in Montana — and contends it always has been — doesn’t necessarily make it so.
“The administration here is attempting to make up new law … backed by no legislative authority, by executive fiat they would make corner crossing illegal,” said Mike Volesky, who spoke during the public comment period. Volesky previously served on the EQC and is a former employee of Montana FWP. “…Montana hunters and anglers and others in the outdoors should be very, very wary of this corner-crossing executive fiat. As a legislative body, I ask that you [the EQC] be wary, too. You actually do represent the people and you actually do possess the constitutional authority to make law.”
Volesky and others at the meeting referenced memos from Montana FWP that had directed game wardens to “refrain from citing for corner crossing because of the lack of prosecution by county attorneys.”
The collective confusion at the EQC meeting wasn’t much of a surprise for anyone who’s been tracking public access there. The status of corner crossing has been a legal gray area in Montana for years. Debate has resurfaced following the conclusion of the landmark corner crossing case in neighboring Wyoming in March 2025, when an appeals court ruled that corner crossing is legal in the six states of its jurisdiction: Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Utah. When the Supreme Court of the U.S. declined to hear an appeal of that case in the fall, the director of Montana FWP “reaffirmed” that corner crossing in Montana isn’t allowed.
“Corner crossing remains unlawful in Montana, and Montanans should continue to obtain permission from the adjoining landowners before crossing corners from one piece of public land to another,” Director Clark said. “Wardens will continue to report corner crossing cases to local county attorneys to exercise their prosecutorial discretion.”
The point of contention, say critics, is that it’s not clear that corner crossing was ever unlawful in the first place, and that a few years ago, wardens had been instructed to use their discretion in citing hunters — or not — for corner crossing.
“If it’s always been illegal, why hasn’t a single county attorney prosecuted a corner crosser?” Callaghan says. “And why have all these [Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks] memos said, it’s up to the county attorney [to decide]? To me that doesn’t say, ‘Here’s a black and white law, kids.’”
Seeking Clarity on the Law
Representatives of the Montana Stockgrowers Association and the Montana Farm Bureau spoke at the meeting and thanked Juras for her presentation. They also both asked for clarity on the law.
“We feel that there is law that clearly states what is allowed and what isn’t allowed in the state of Montana. However, we know that because of the decision of the 10th Circuit Court, there is question universally around the West,” executive vice president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association Raylee Honeycutt told the EQC Wednesday. She noted that her group had joined Wyoming colleagues to ask the Supreme Court of the U.S. to hear the Iron Bar Holdings court case. “We were very disappointed to see that the Supreme Court denied that request because we do want a clear and final answer on the question of corner crossing.”
There are only three ways to get this “clear and final answer” on corner crossing in Montana, according to a retired land-use lawyer from Wyoming who called into the meeting to comment.
“There’s three ways to resolve this. One is the way they did it in Wyoming,” says the lawyer, RT Cox, who also noted that this method was time consuming and risky for the Missouri hunters who were dragged into both civil and criminal court cases and risked loss of hunting privileges, financial loss, and jail time. “Another is to have a territory judgment action in the federal courts in Montana, and have the federal courts declare basically whether the Iron Bar rationale applies in the Ninth Circuit or in Montana.”
A third way Cox pointed to (and which several other speakers suggested) is passing legislation on corner crossing.
“Legislation … can clarify that there isn’t a conflict between state property law and federal law, including the Unlawful Enclosures Act. The Iron Bar holding decision in the Tenth Circuit makes it very clear that federal law supersedes its state law on this issue. Now, professor, Lieutenant Governor, Juras is probably gonna disagree with me there, but that’s the way I read it.”
Common Ground on Corner-Locked Public
During her presentation, Lt. Gov. Juras referenced an onX report about inaccessible public-land in the West, noting that just 871,000 acres of Montana’s 30.5 million acres of public land are “corner-locked.”
“It’s a relatively small percentage of landlocked [land] that we have,” Juras said. “… [it’s] less than three percent of Montana’s federal lands.”
The relative size of that corner-locked public land is irrelevant, says Callaghan, because every parcel of public land in Montana matters to the public. This is particularly true in an era of rising tensions between public and private access to game and quality habitat.
“[So] much time, effort, and money goes in every year to address overcrowding on public lands. It’s a topic that’s constant and it’s not going away,” says Callaghan. “And if we were to look at this so myopically and narrowly, to be like, ‘Oh a pencil can’t fit through the crack in ownership,’ what burden are we then putting on the state to say 871,000 acres is so small nobody cares about it? These acres aren’t created equally … one 640-acre chunk could be an entire world in some circumstances. In other circumstances, that 640 might just be the mile you gotta walk through to get to something good.”
If mass confusion was nearly universal during Wednesday’s meeting, it was also clear that Montanans on both sides of the corner-crossing issue hunt and recreate on public land. They also want to follow the letter of the law to do so.
Related: We Corner Crossed the Wyoming Ranch That Started It All. Accessing Those Public Lands Is Still Complicated
“I know there’s members of both the [Montana] Farm Bureau and Stockgrowers Association that think corner crossing, when done right and respectfully, could be a great tool,” says Callaghan, who also noted mutual interest in managing elk that damage private property and also range onto corner-locked public. “This shouldn’t be an us-versus-them issue, and I don’t believe it is at all. But everybody needs to come to the table with this mutual assurance and respect of both private property rights and access. They’re not mutually exclusive.”
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