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Author Dobie calls Lilly a "brutal exterminator" of Western wild life who somehow believed hunting to be his "patriotic duty." He preferred to sleep on the ground even when a bed was available, and carried no food except some meal and corn into the wilderness with him. In winter he wore three or four wool shirts at a time; to keep them clean enough to suit him, he merely rotated them from skinside to outside, let the elements launder them.
In Lilly's long life as a hunter he probably killed close to 1,000 bears and mountain lions. He might have killed more but for one Sabbatarian self-limitation: he would abandon even the freshest trail on Saturday evening and refuse to pick it up again until Monday morning. Says Author Dobie: Ben Lilly "was in the tradition of the Mountain Men and was the very last man in that tradition. There can never be another."