## Facts

- A development company owned in fee essentially all land bordering Lake St. Helen.
- In 1904, the company granted the St. Helen Shooting Club “exclusive hunting rights” on the surrounding lands.
- The club later acquired 12 acres on the lake, built a clubhouse and cottages, and regulated member use by club rules.
- The company later conveyed a lakeside parcel in fee to William H. Mogle, expressly subject to the club’s previously granted exclusive hunting privileges.
- Mogle operated a summer resort on his parcel and, through his employee Winters, allegedly interfered with the club’s exclusivity, including by outfitting boats with hunting blinds and renting them to the public.
- The club filed a bill in equity seeking to enjoin Mogle and Winters from infringing and facilitating infringement of the club’s exclusive hunting rights.
- The chancery court dismissed the bill, holding the exclusive hunting-right grant void on public policy grounds.

## Issues

1. Whether an exclusive hunting privilege can be severed from the fee and conveyed by grant as a separate property interest.
2. Whether a grant of exclusive private hunting rights is void as against public policy.

## Decision

- The Michigan Supreme Court reversed the decree dismissing the bill.
- The court held that exclusive hunting rights may be separated from the fee and conveyed by grant.
- The court held that such a conveyance is not void as against public policy in Michigan.
- The court rendered a decree for the club and granted equitable relief protecting the exclusive hunting privilege (injunctive relief against interference).

## Legal Principles

- A fee owner may convey an exclusive hunting privilege as a separable interest in land, and that interest may persist after later transfers of the fee.
- Subsequent grantees of the fee who take subject to a prior grant of exclusive hunting rights are bound by that grant.
- Absent a statute or clearly established state policy prohibiting it, an exclusive private hunting-right grant is enforceable and not invalidated on generalized public policy grounds.
- Equity may enjoin acts that interfere with or facilitate interference with an exclusive hunting privilege validly granted.

## Conclusion

The court upheld the severability and enforceability of an exclusive hunting-right grant, rejected a public-policy invalidation, and ordered injunctive relief against a subsequent fee owner and his agent for conduct that enabled public hunting in derogation of the club’s exclusive privilege.


St. Helen Shooting Club v. Mogle, 234 Mich. 60, 207 N.W. 915 (Mich. 1926)