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For millionaire and four hunters, a wild Western lawsuit over public land: The ruling on an invisible corner in Elk Mountain, Wyo., could determine how much private property rights limit public access

wapo.st For millionaire and four hunters, a wild Western lawsuit over public land

The ruling on an invisible corner in Elk Mountain, Wyo., could help determine how much private property rights thwart the public’s ability to access its land.

For millionaire and four hunters, a wild Western lawsuit over public land

Four Missouri elk hunters used [a stepladder] to climb over an invisible corner from one parcel of Bureau of Land Management terrain to another. They never touched a toe on two adjacent swaths of private property marked by “No Trespassing” signs.

But to the owner of that property, a North Carolina multimillionaire whose portfolio includes 22,000 acres of this game-rich mountain, the hunters’ aerial corner-cross was trespassing all the same. Whether he is correct — and the extent to which private property rights can thwart the public’s ability to access its land on thousands of similar corners — is now being weighed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver.

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