Wyoming’s effort to codify nook crossing into state statute is useless. Montana’s parallel push gained’t attain the legislature till 2027 on the earliest. Collectively, the 2 states present how far the West stays from resolving a query that immediately determines the place anglers and hunters can legally go.
Nook crossing refers to stepping from one parcel of public land to a different on the single level the place two public parcels meet diagonally—with out bodily touching the personal land that fills the opposite two corners of that intersection. The observe is the one solution to attain thousands and thousands of acres of federal and state floor within the West, the place a Nineteenth-century railroad land-grant system left private and non-private land interlocked in a checkerboard sample. Landowners have argued that crossing at a shared nook constitutes trespass by way of their airspace; public land advocates counter that no personal floor is touched and no injury is finished. The U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the tenth Circuit sided with the advocates, and when the U.S. Supreme Courtroom declined to listen to a landowner’s enchantment in October 2025, the ruling turned settled regulation in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico—however left Montana and different states outdoors the tenth Circuit in authorized limbo.
Wyoming’s Home Invoice 19, which might have written the tenth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals’ corner-crossing ruling into state statute and unlocked some 2.4 million corner-locked acres for public entry, handed the Home 47-15 in February earlier than collapsing on the Senate flooring in a 27-4 vote earlier this month. The bill’s collapse got here not from outright opposition to nook crossing—the tenth Circuit settled that query in Wyoming and 5 different states—however from a cascade of competing amendments that made the laws unworkable. Disputes over whether or not state belief lands must be included, how an unmarked nook must be legally outlined, and who bears accountability for figuring out a crossing level is legitimate turned an 85-word invoice right into a procedural tangle. Sen. Invoice Landen, who had shepherded the measure by way of committee, acknowledged what the vote meant. “If this invoice goes quietly to relaxation this night,” he stated, “I want whoever properly who’s going to take this up sooner or later, as a result of it’s not going away.”
The sensible upshot for Wyoming anglers and hunters is unchanged however clarified: nook crossing stays authorized below federal case regulation, however with no state statute to again it up, regulation enforcement nonetheless lacks a easy reply when a grievance is available in. The tenth Circuit determination was a win. A statute would have been readability. Wyoming doesn’t have it.
Montana by no means had both. As a result of the state sits within the ninth Circuit fairly than the tenth, the federal ruling doesn’t apply there in any respect, and nook crossing stays formally illegal below state steerage from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. As MidCurrent reported last month, roughly 871,000 acres of Montana public land are corner-locked—parcels that may solely be reached on the level the place two checkerboard sections of public floor meet, surrounded on all sides by personal holdings. Montana’s legislature meets in common session solely in odd-numbered years, so any invoice should look ahead to the 2027 session.
That hasn’t stopped Sen. Ellie Boldman of Missoula and Rep. Josh Seckinger of Bozeman—co-chairs of the Montana Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus—from laying the groundwork. In mid-February the 2 introduced their intent to pursue laws—focusing on the 2027 session or a possible interim committee motion—arguing in a Bozeman Each day Chronicle op-ed that the invoice would “do one easy factor. It clarifies in Montana regulation that nook crossing—when no personal land is touched and no property is broken—is lawful.” Seckinger, a fly fishing information, has framed the stakes in phrases his purchasers perceive immediately: entry determines alternative, he wrote, alternative determines participation, and participation funds conservation. A Montana Free Press/Eagleton ballot launched March 5 discovered public opinion firmly on their facet—roughly 60 percent of Montanans favor legalization, with help holding throughout get together strains: 65 p.c of independents, 63 p.c of Democrats, and 53 p.c of Republicans. An identical invoice failed within the Montana Home in 2013 after drawing busloads of blaze-orange-clad sportsmen to the Capitol.
Wyoming’s Senate vote is instructive for what Montana faces in 2027. Wyoming had the tenth Circuit ruling on its facet, bipartisan help, and a invoice that almost all lawmakers agreed merely mirrored current regulation—and nonetheless couldn’t survive the modification course of. Montana has robust public help and a guide-turned-legislator primed to hold the invoice, however no favorable federal precedent and at the very least 9 months earlier than the legislature even convenes. Each efforts circle the identical fault line: a checkerboard land possession sample courting to Nineteenth-century railroad grants that, absent legislative readability, leaves the query of who can attain which public land to county attorneys, wardens, and particular person threat tolerance.
For the 2026 season, the conditions differ however the sensible steerage is comparable. In Wyoming, nook crossing is authorized—the tenth Circuit stated so—however with no statute, some county attorneys and wardens nonetheless deal with it as contested floor. In Montana it stays formally illegal below FWP steerage, with no prosecution having reached trial in latest reminiscence. In each states, anglers and hunters who select to cross at checkerboard corners accomplish that at their very own threat.
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