Give it a rest about the payments.
Creds to your work on this
He doesn’t own the land. The Fedgov does. You can’t buy the rights, you pay the fees. He has, by own admission not done so.
I have some experience with this, unfortunately. I feel for this gentleman, but it’s not his land and he has been grazing on it illegally for twenty years by his own admission. Range wars have literally been fought over less. If another gentleman had the rights, there would have been shots fired well before the Feds showed up.
I want to know why this is happening now, the way it is.