Terry Wilkerson (left) with a Hunting for Heroes group and a nice bull | Facebook
A Campbell County rancher’s attempt to keep hunters from stopping to hunt public land while traveling a 10-mile private easement road has sparked a lawsuit that could set precedent for how Wyoming treats access to millions of acres of landlocked public land.
At the heart of the dispute is Calvin Ten Braak, a Rozet-area landowner whose property is completely surrounded by private and state land. In November 2024, he finally secured a recorded easement across neighboring ranches to reach his parcel. The route crosses land recently purchased by members of the Maestri family (operating through Corral Maestri LLC and Maestri Ranch Company, LLC), along with some state and Bureau of Land Management sections.
The easement grants Ten Braak and his guests “ingress and egress” to his property. What it does not explicitly forbid, however, is stopping along the way to hunt on the thousands of acres of adjacent public land—including a 16,500-acre BLM parcel that can only realistically be reached via the same road.
And that’s exactly what the Maestri companies object to.
In June 2025, their attorney sent Ten Braak a cease-and-desist letter demanding that he and anyone using the easement stop using the road as a “thoroughfare to public land for hunting purposes.” The letter was quickly followed by a lawsuit filed in Campbell County District Court.
“The purpose of the easement is to allow access to the grantees’ property, not public property,” attorney Cole Gustafson wrote on behalf of the Maestris.
Frank Maestri told reporters the case is strictly about private property rights and has “nothing to do with access to public land.”
Ten Braak’s attorney, Alan Harding of Laramie, fired back that private landowners have no authority to police what people do once they reach public land. “Public lands are held in trust for the benefit of the public, and access to such lands cannot be curtailed by private parties absent statutory authority or ownership interest,” Harding wrote in court filings.
A map of Ten Braak’s easement | Campbell County
For the past seven years, Ten Braak has allowed Hunting With Heroes, a Casper-based nonprofit, to use the road to take disabled veterans on elk and deer hunts.
“I would think it would be a no-brainer that the judge would say, ‘You can’t keep them from going on public land,’” Hunting With Heroes guide Terry Wilkerson said. “If this is upheld, I think it’s going to have a tremendous negative impact on access to a lot of public land.”
State Rep. Karlee Provenza (D-Laramie), a longtime public-access advocate, called the lawsuit part of a troubling pattern she sees as a blatant demonstration of the lengths some will go to block access to public land.
The case is unfolding against the backdrop of Wyoming’s high-profile “corner-crossing” litigation, in which hunters recently won the right to step from one public parcel to another at surveyed section corners without trespassing on private land.
A hearing was held last week before District Judge Mike McGrady and trial is currently scheduled for sometime this month.
Naturally, hunters, veterans’ groups, and public-land advocates are watching this case closely. A ruling in favor of the Maestri companies could give private landowners sweeping new power to restrict access to public land anywhere an easement or two-track is the only practical route in.
For now, the gate remains open but the legal fight over who gets to stop along the way is just getting started.
