Ben Lilly was an ultimate hunter who, like Esau of Bible times, never hunted on Sunday and cared less for possessions and money than for knowledge of the outdoors and the four-legged challenges he pursued, mainly bears and lions. Beginning a few miles east of here on Bayou Bonne Idee and the Beouf River, he hunted with his dogs south through Tensas swamp, where President Teddy Roosevelt came to hunt with him, then west through East Texas, northern Mexico, and ultimately to southwest New Mexico, where he settled and made it his patriotic duty to kill the mountain lions and bears that killed ranchers' livestock. The ranchers paid him and the government paid him, unlike back home in Louisiana, so he stayed and sent money home to his wife and children. One of his two daughters, Verna, became a noted school teacher, and at her death in 1985 she left more than a half-million dollars in two trust funds to the Mer Rouge Methodist Church, one supporting two student scholarships each year and the other the pastor's salary. After a bout with pneumonia, Ben Lilly died and was buried in Silver City, N.M., at the age of 80, never having returned to Mer Rouge but leaving his mark there and across the Southwest.