Benbrown

Yeah, basically, you can take out the meat and a skull cap with antlers. They will dip your skull cap and antlers i bleach to "disinfect" them. See the NMDGF web site for details (look at the press release).

Right now, ungulates (hoofed animals, including elephants and rhinos) cannot be imported and released in the United States. They must be quarantined for life in an approved zoological park or zoo. All of the exotic ungulates that populate ranches in Texas (and increasingly elsewhere) are offspring of captive animals. By and large, the "ecological generalists" such as nilgai, blackbuck, sambar deer, axis deer from India and the smaller plains antelope from Africa have done the best job of adapting to diverse habitats in the U.S. Back in the early part of the 20th century, the San Diego Zoo was given a ranch by the Hearst family that was situated about 20 miles north of what was then San Diego. The zoo used this as a breeding facility to breed captive animals and these were traded and/or sold to other zoos. By the late 1920s, some species were becoming so abundant that there was no market at other zoos, and Belle Benchley (the director of the San Diego Zoological Society) began marketing surplus animals to wealthy hobby ranchers around San Antonio, Texas. About this time, some animals were also sold to the King Ranch in south Texas. Many other zoos around the country also have excess numbers of these animals that are sold and traded wherever a home for them can be found. There are now about 27-30 species of free-ranging exotic ungulates in Texas. Some species are now so abundant that it is not worth the expense to try and trap them and sell live animals, and the few trophy males that are taken have little or no effect on the size of the growing populations. Oryx introduced into White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico have become so abundant that they have not been controlled by year-round hunting off the missle range. White Sands National Monument has issued a "shoot on sight" directive on Park Service property. The missing element is, of course, their natural predators that co-evolved with these animals in their native habitats. Dr. Paul Martin, an anthropologist with the University of Arizona, has proposed that there are "vacant ecological niches" as a result of the late Pleistocene extinction of large mammals that occured in North America 10,000-25,000 years ago. He (and others) have suggested that moving large animals from Africa and Asia that are struggling in their native habitats would have a positive ecological effect on plant communities in North America. However, one of the reasons that many of these animals are struggling is that they do not match up with habitats that arise as the result of human occupation and economic enterprises. Elephants in Africa are being "controlled" (i.e., killed) because they have expanded into areas where their presence conflicts with farming and livestock husbandry. The proposed scenario could only succeed if large predators were reintroduced along with their prey. What all this would do to native animals such as white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, cougars and wolves (not to mention ranches and farms) boggles the mind! Don't hold your breath...

The key is not to sound like a fawn bleating--use a jackrabbit or cottontail call. Back in the Pleistocene, I spent a summer helping another graduate student catch and radio-collar newborn whitetail fawns in South Texas. For the first couple of days after they are born, you can actually run them down and catch them (we used a long-handled dip net). One day, I was going fishing with a buddy on the ranch where we were working and saw a doe that I knew was nursing a fawn. We stopped and went over and started to search. I quickly found the fawn and managed to tackle him. I sat down in the tall grass and cradled the little fellow in my lap and sent my buddy back to the pickup to get the tackle box that we carried our collaring gear in. After my friend walked away, the fawn began to bleat piteously. I sat still, trying not to do anything to increase its fear, and a few seconds later, I heard hoof beats coming my way. Craning my neck to see above the tall grass, I was startled to see another doe bearing down on me at warp speed! I quickly stood up so she could see what I was. She was obviously not impressed with who or what I was, and began flailing at me with her hooves, ripping my shirt in a couple of places and bruising one of my shoulders. I started yelling at her and made a couple of runs at her like I was going to throw a body block (still hanging on the fawn), and she backed off a bit, but continued to snort and stamp around until my buddy came running up with the radio gear. She then pranced away, stopping occasionally to snort, but never came back. We put the collar on the fawn and laid him back down. He suffered no ill effects and was still alive at the time that the collar was shed (they were configured so as to drop off when the fawns reached 25-30 pounds). I have seen does that had fawns laying out chase coyotes and bobcats for fairly long distances, flailing at them with their hooves when they get close enough. That encounter with a mad momma deer is the closest that I have ever come to being seriously injured in over thirty years of working outdoors (except for the three "emergencies" flying wildlife censuses in helicopters).

30-A is getting some tonight--it's black, black to the west! Ben

Weller's Wildlife Studio in Tucson--Bud and Gavin are the best that I have seen.

Most of the good loading manuals have drop and wind drift tables for each of the bullets they make, with muzzle velocities shown at 100 fps intervals. If you know the ballistic coefficient of the bullet you are shooting and the muzzle velocity, you can find a bullet in the tables with a similar B.C. and get a pretty good idea what you can expect. Most of these tables are calculated with a few known points determined by shooting and the rest of the information is extrapolated from ballistic programs on a computer, so it is always best to confirm the expected results by shooting your load in your rifle. I have a PACT chronograph that includes a ballistic calculator program and the resulting drop tables are almost always right on. Of course, I use the actual muzzle velocity of my loads that are obtained by chronographing five rounds and calculating the average. This program lets me adjust for ambient temperature and altitude (I beleive that the manuals assume sea level and 75 degrees F). All of this is probably only important to a rifle "looney" like me, but it makes my hobby more enjoyable! So far it hasn't cut into the money that I spend on booze or permits...

You did not mention which 7 mm cartridge you are shooting, but 150 grain bullets are a good all-around weight in most of the 7 mm rounds. If you don't handload, go with one of the premium bullets loaded by almost all of the commercial ammo makers now. You might consider the advice of Charlie Sisk, a custom rifle maker over in Texas, whose motto is "load partitions, shut up and go hunting!"

A 3,000 ft reduction in altitude will effectively reduce the ballistic coefficent of the bullet that you are using, but the difference won't really affect the trajectory of your load that much. Last year, I hunted elk at 8,600 ft in Colorado with a .300 Weatherby Magnum that I sighted in at my house here in southwestern New Mexico at 5,100 ft. Using the ballistic calculator that came with my PACT chronograph, I calculated and printed out a trajectory table out to 500 yds. I taped the table to the butt stock of my rifle so that I could consult it in the field if need be. I also shot the rifle at 100, 200 and 300 yds from a bench to confirm that the calculated trajectory matched the actual one. As it turned out, I killed a bull on the second day of a five-day hunt. The owner of the ranch that I was hunting on had a 300 yd range set up and I spent part of one afternoon shooting at 200 and 300 yds to see (among other things) if the change in elevation affected the trajectory of the load that I was shooting. If it did, I couldn't tell the difference. The main thing is to find a place to shoot from a solid rest at ranges out to the maximum that you might encounter in hunting and determine for yourself where your rifle is shooting at those distances. Good hunting!

The .257 100 grain ballistic tip is a varmint bullet--it was never intended to be a big-game bullet. The 115 grain is tougher, but can still ruin a lot of meat with shoulder shots at higher impact velocities. If you want to shoot 100 grain bullets, the 100 grain Barnes X has performed very well in a couple of .257 Weatherbys and one .257 Ackley Improved that I am familiar with. Since I don't buy factory ammo except in emergencies, I have no idea if anyone is loading the 100 grain Barnes X in .25-06. For what it's worth, I have used Ballistic Tips in .243, .257, .270, .280 and .338 calibers. The 120 grain BTs in several 7mm-08s have performed the best on game, but I load them for my daughter (petite) and grandsons (oldest is just now 16) and I use moderate loads. With loads at the hotter end of the spectrum, I no longer use them in .25, .27 and .28 caliber rounds--too much bloodshot meat. The 200 grain .338 BT is a different animal. It has a thicker jacket and penetrates with less frontal upset than do the lighter bullets. It has performed well on several elk in a .338-06. My wife has a Winchester Model 70 in .280 that shoots a maximum load with 140 grain BTs into one-half inch at 100 yards year in and year out. About five years ago, she insisted that I load something else as she likes to take shoulder shots and does not like the mess that BTs leave (however, they do kill deer about as quickly as anything that you can shoot). She now shoots Partitions and is much happier with the terminal ballistics.

As you get older, you select your hunting partners much more carefully! Currently, I hunt with my wife, one of my stepsons, one of his brother's good friends, and an old friend from New York (City?), one at a time. I prefer to hunt by myself, but my aging eyes don't find as many deer as they used to. It's also nice to have a buff young man that thinks that carrying a deer out for the old man is a good expenditure of time. The two young men referred to above spot more deer than I do these days. My wife is also a good spotter and we show each other about as many as we are shown. However, I like to move (and sit) at my own pace, so I tend to tell folks where I am going (and make sure to leave a note under my windshield wiper if I change my mind) and do my own thing... I have recently come to know and appreciate the husband of my wife's cousin (who died a number of years ago). He is my age, we are in about the same physical condition and we agree on a number of things relative to hunting ethics, rifles and the state of the world in general. He and I have made one fishing and one hunting trip together, and we are going to Africa soon. He has hunted about as many Coues deer as I have and I am looking forward to making a hunt or two with him. Unfortunately, I did not draw a single tag in New Mexico this year, and I am waiting to see if anything comes from the Arizona draw... Fortunately, I have an elk tag in Colorado and week-long bird hunts lined up in Nebraska and Montana--and a new .375 to work up loads for Africa--so life is not all that bad!

When a buck drops his antlers is a function of the level of circulating testosterone in his system. This is primarily influenced by day length. Obviously, there is a great deal of variability between individual animals, but the size of the antlers has little, if anything to do with it. Circulating testosterone reaches its lowest levels after the antlers have dropped. After a short period (with increasing day length in the spring), testosterone levels begin to rise and, when the critical level is reached, new antler growth is initiated. During the period of antler growth, testosterone levels don't vary much. In the early fall, as day length starts to decrease, the testosterone level rises again, antler growth ceases, the antlers ossify (become hard) and the velvet is rubbed off. As days grow shorter. testosterone levels continue to rise to a higher plateau and, again,when the critical level is reached, rutting behavior begins. Increasing day length during the late winter and early spring causes the cessation of rutting behavior and eventually the loss of the last year's antlers. I stress again that this cycle is quite variable between individuals. I have seen large and small white-tail bucks that have dropped their antlers in early January and others still with hard antlers in late May. In my experience, the timing is much more variable in Coues deer than in other white-tailed deer populations in the U.S. (as is the fawn drop). On one ranch in Texas, we had a large buck that was marked with a neck collar that we observed for over 8 years. He retained antlers into late May and early June every year after most bucks had dropped their antlers by the end of March. Yet, each fall, he sported a new set of hard antlers at just about the same time as everyone else. As you go north through the range of white-tailed deer, the synchronization in these cycles (antler growth and fawn drop) between individuals becomes greater. Although I have never observed it, I have been told by biologists in Mexico that in subspecies of white-tailed deer in central and southern Mexico you can see individuals with hard antlers at just about any time of the year.

We have used Weller's almost exclusively for 5-6 years. I have not seen better work anywhere! Ben

I don't have any specific information about bears in the Burros, but I know that bears are much more common in the southern mountains (Burros, Animas and Peloncillos) than is generally believed. The Animas are all private, so that leaves the Burros and Peloncillos. There aren't that many houndsmen left in southwestern New Mexico and most bears are shot opportunistically by deer hunters. The Peloncillos (Unit 27) have a fair number of bears and the best access is in the southern end where most of the bears are. I have encountered bears while driving the Geronimo Trail, and it is not uncommon to see them while horseback in the higher elevations. Access through private land on the New Mexico side is tough if you don't know someone, but some of the ranchers on the Arizona side will permit access to the adjacent national forest if you ask politely. Good luck!

Thanks, Allen! I appreciate your prompt reply. Ben

Right now, my favorite Coues deer rifle is a .257 Ackley Improved. It is built on a Mexican Mauser action with a Krieger cut-rifled barrel and a Rimrock synthetic stock. My favorite load sends 100-grain Barnes TSX bullets down-range at a smidgen over 3,400 ft/sec. If I am hunting something larger than a Coues, I use 115-grain Nosler partitions at a little over 3,200 ft/sec. For more punch, I like to use a Weatherby Lightweight that has been opened up to .280 Ackley Improved. It weighs about the same as the .257 AI, but will do about 3,200 ft/sec with the Barnes 130-grain TSX and 3,100 ft/sec with a 140-grain Barnes TSX. For elk, my favorite is a Ruger No. 1-A that has been rebarreled to .338-06. I either shoot 200-grain Nosler Ballistic Tips at a little over 2,900 or 185-grain TSXs at a little over 3,000. That said, if I had to shoot just one rifle, I would go back to my pre-64 Winchester Model 70 Featherweight in .270 Winchester.

I ran regularly for over 35 years, but last summer ( a few months after my 61st birthday) my knees made me quit. I did a little strength training and a lot of walking getting ready for hunting season last fall, but my bad knee gave out on me about noon on the fourth day of the five-day New Mexico season. I brooded about it most of the winter. We left the ranch and moved to "town" (Animas, New Mexico, population maybe 200 and elevation about 4,500 ft) in December. In early March, my wife insisted that I take the mountain bikes that we have ridden off and on for the last 7-8 years and get them ready to ride again. She started riding the first week in March and I broke down and joined her about ten days later. We have a route that runs up a pipeline to the old Lordsburg road and then up into the footlhills of the Pyramid mountains. After two months of this, my cardiovascular fitness has returned and my legs are stronger than all of the years that I was running. Best of all, my knees are happy. I am betting that my Colorado elk hunt and my New Mexico and Arizona Coues hunts (I'm sure that I will draw the tags!) will be more fun and less of a slog this year. If my planned trip to Namibia and Botswana for late summer actually comes off, I will be ready to tackle the wilds of Africa, as well. I dearly loved to run, but for aging knees, the bike is probably better.

Back when I was a working deer biologist, I radiotracked white-tailed deer in several areas of Texas, in central Kansas and in Nebraska. The conventional wisdom was pretty much correct: bucks had larger home ranges than does (some of which lived on a couple hundred acres over the life or their transmitters). We always had a few dominant bucks that showed up during the rut that no one had ever seen before and a few of our dominant radio-collared bucks would disappear for several days to a couple of weeks toward the end of the rut. My experience with Coues deer on the ranch that I managed in New Mexico reflected exactly the same sorts of behavior: we saw the same bucks in the same places at almost exactly the same time year after year. Some of the Coues bucks had relatively large home ranges (say perimeters encompassing 8-12 square miles), but they tended to use only very small parts of these areas, moving from one to another but not spending much time in between. If you added up the areas that were actually used, and not just traveled through, you would end up with a home range not too different from that of a Texas or Kansas whitetail. One behavior that cropped up early on was what we called "trips". Even in does with relatively small home ranges, you would see an animal take off several times each year and make relatively long "trips" outside the home range. These did not last more than a few days at the most and often lasted only a day or two. On the San Pedro Ranch in Dimmit County, Texas, we experienced a severe drought and a couple of the windmills at which deer watered went dry. Those deer shifted their home ranges to include water sources up to six miles away in the extreme cases. How did they know where there might be other water? We always surmised that they learned about it on these "trips". Since I came to New Mexico, I have seen Coues deer leave a mountain range after an extensive wildifire top-killed many of the shrubs. As the current drought took hold and dried up both wet-weather and perennial water sources, this apparently kept them from coming back, despite some recovery in the habitat. We also saw whitetails move down out of the mountains to the lower elevation valleys and foot hills that we thought of as classic mule deer habitat, apparently because they did not like living with the burgeoning populations of mountain lions in the high country. As the drought got worse, perennial water sources became fewer, and the Coues deer moved even lower. I had three does that dropped and raised fawns in the cienega in front of my house the last three years that I lived there. They never went back up in the mountains and were still living there when I left the ranch in December of 2004. I have sat on high outcrops and ridges and watched Coues bucks evade hunters without ever traveling more than a few hundred yards. I have also seen bucks that were spooked, apparently leave the country, only to find them right back in the same area after a day or two. I think that Coues have the basic whitetail instincts: they find limited areas that meet their needs for food, cover and water without having to travel long distances each day and spend their time in these limited areas, even though they may be quite a distance apart. They are actually using only a small fraction of what we might define as "home range" based on a polygon that "connects the dots" at the perimeter of their movements. Ben

Ernesto: When Lark turns up, I bet you pay for listing him under "Miscellaneous"! Get ready... Ben

I have two Number 1s--a .22-250 in a No. 1-B and a .338-06 in a No. 1-A. The 1-B's are pretty heavy for carrying around, and even the 1-A's are excessively heavy in the standard calibers below .30-06. That is the only drawback that I have found in more than a decade of using these rifles. You don't need an aftermarket trigger. Any good gunsmith who is familiar with Rugers can adjust the trigger to a crisp, safe condition. My .22-250 breaks cleanly at a hair over 2 1/2 pounds and the .338-06 does the same at just about 3 1/2 pounds even. The .22-250 shot really well right out of the box, but I had the trigger work done to get it like I wanted. The .338-06 has also had the trigger adjusted and the fore-end glass-bedded. My gunsmith knows the set screw set-up with the fore-end hanger, but recommends glass bedding the fore-end first. That is often all that is needed to shrink group sizes. If that doesn't do the trick, you can add the set screw. A young friend of mine bought a No. 1-B stainless in 7mm Remington Magnum last year and it did not shoot all that well out of the box. I took it to the gunsmith and he glass-bedded the fore-end, line-bored the scope rings and adjusted the trigger, and the bill was right around $70. It now shoots like it ought to. I don't shoot the .22-250 all that much as I have a really nice Belgium Browning bolt gun in that caliber that I prefer to carry. However, I carry the .338-06 every day that I am elk hunting, and have shot a couple of mule deer and a pronghorn using 175 grain Barnes bullets, as well. They are really nice rifles and the No. 1-A's are just made for a saddle scabbard. I have carried mine on several lion hunts, but have never needed it because the lions have all been well within handgun range.

This is a bad thing for two reasons: First, once the grazing permits are retired and the ranches are no longer viable economic units, the private land that anchors those public land leases will inevitably be sold--either as whole parcels or they will be subdivided into smaller parcels and sold by the current owner. Because of the patterns of settlement and homesteading, most of the private land that is embedded in the larger public ownership in western states is where most of the the water and fertile soils are. These are key elements in the habitat needed by all wildlife, especially wide-ranging species like deer and elk. There are several studies documenting the detrimental effects of dispersed rural subdivision on wildlife, and especially on habitat for elk, deer and pronghorns. Second, the private lands that aren't sold for subdivision will be most attractive to wealthy folks looking for a rural retreat. Much of the ranchland in the west is changing hands these days and the buyers are generally attracted to the opportunities for hunting and other outdoor recreation. These folks are not interested in permitting you to trespass to obtain access to the public lands behind their deeded land. They will sell trespass opportunities, and will support the idea of landowner permits for deer and elk because they can offset the cost of ownership by selling the permits that they don't or can't use. It's not you and me that they will sell to, but rather to the Taulmans of the world, or out-of-state hunters who are willing to pay for the opportunity to hunt in the west. The best way to keep our landscapes and wildlife habitat intact is through responsible stewardship of both public and private land by folks who can make a living by adapting to natural systems and using them responsibly. Good ranchers do this and they should be encouraged. The reality of modern America is that population pressures will put more and more pressure on wildlife habitat and hunting opportunities. We will never be able to revert to the days when you could hunt almost anywhere in the west by asking politely. We need to concentrate on keeping the wildlife habitat and wildlife populations that we have intact and healthy. That's my sermon for today.

Go to the Boone and Crockett web site and click on "scoring your trophy". They give you specific instructions, as well as blank forms, and the program will calculate the final totals for you, eliminating the need to add up all those fractions and divide by 8.

For many years, I was a white-tailed deer biologist in Texas, and worked all over the state. Later, I supervised the range specialists for the General Land Office who worked out of the Alpine office north of the Big Bend Park, one of whom was a long-time wildlife biologist who had spent his entire career in the Trans-Pecos. Despite spending hours talking about deer with most of the wildlife professionals, I never heard of any attempts to introduce, reintroduce, or supplement del Carmen whitetails. Texans have transplanted just about every critter imaginable, native and exotic, throughout the state and Texas whitetails of several subspecies have been exported to just about every area of the United States. I suppose that it is not inconceivable that Coues were brought into west Texas, but I doubt it for two reasons: (1) they are not very abundant anywhere and numbers were especially low during the 1930s, and (2) they would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to trap with the methods that were commonly used back then. Fortunately, the CCC kept really good records of all of their projects, and it would not be difficult to determine whether or not there really were projects undertaken to move Coues deer to west Texas. If I can find the time, I will try to research this a little bit and see if there are any records of the CCC boys moving Coues to West Texas. As Jim Hefflefinger noted, in a post forwarded a while back by someone else, the del Carmen whitetails and the Coues are at the opposite end of a cline that extends down into Mexico and across to southern New Mexico and Arizona. I seriously doubt that there is really much genetic difference. Both are ecotypes (morphological variations) that are adapted to life in the Sky Island mountain ranges. A young man at NAU is finishing up his dissertation on the genetics of Coues and has seemingly done a really good job of gathering genetic material from throughout their range of occurrence. Once he has completed his analyses and interpretations, we will know a lot more about how these isolated populations relate to one another.

I have had a bit of experience with .257 Weatherbys. In the early 1980s, I was thinking about getting one and borrowed one from a rancher friend in South Texas while we were collecting deer on his ranch. As I recall, I took about ten or so deer that day, all with neck shots from a rest, out to an honest 200 yards or so. I was impressed with how flat it shot and with the accuracy with factory ammo. Long story short, within a few days I had an opportunity to buy a .25-06 cheap and acquired that rifle (which I could never make shoot as good as the .257 Weatherby). In 1992, I was guiding a hunter from Cleveland, Ohio, for Coues deer. He was elderly (about the age that I am now!) and had a bout with polio when he was young. He still wore a brace on his left leg and walked with difficulty on rocky, uneven ground. He could only manage moderate slopes and climbing even a small mountain was out of the question. He showed up with a .257 Weatherby with a high-power variable scope with a 50 mm objective lens. I was not very enthusiastic about guiding him, as past experience had taught me that people from east of the Mississippi who show up with Weatherby rifles and high-powered scopes are unlikely to have shot them much, and most are a bit afraid of them. We hunted hard for three days without being able to get him in range of a decent buck. In mid-afternoon of the fourth day, we drove over a saddle and I looked up the slope to the east and saw a deer stand up about 700-800 yards away. I grabbed the binocular and glassed the slope. There were three bucks that were getting up out of their afternoon beds and moving slowly across the face of the mountain. I got my hunter out and got him as far up the lower slope of the mountain as I could. When we had gone as far as he could go, he asked me how far away the bucks were. This was before the days of lazer range-finders and I mentally projected football fields up the side of the mountain. I told him that they were at least 450 yards and probably closer to 500. He sat down and rested his forearm hand in the crotch of the carcass of a fire-killed oak. When I realized that he was going to shoot, I said, "It's a pretty steep uphill. Hold for about 350" He nodded and the rifle went off and I heard the sound of a solid hit. The largest buck took about three steps backward and his rear end went down before he rolled over and never moved again. It turned out that the gnetleman had a farm down in southern Ohio and a ranch in Wyoming and his passion was shooting coyotes with that .257 Weatherby. I have friend that lives in Jackson, Wyoming, that has shot a .257 Weatherby for as long as I have known him (over 30 years). It is the only rifle that he owns and he has used it to shoot carloads of Texas whitetails and Wyoming mule deer. He had taken several elk with it and also a Shiras moose. I guess the moral to this story is, if you have to have the flattest shooting factory rifle and load, the .257 Weatherby is a good choice. However, you have to shoot it a lot to develop the skills to utilize its full potential. Both of the gentlemen referred to above are independently wealthy and the cost of factory ammo was no deterrent to doing a lot of shooting. If you handload, you of course afford to shoot a lot more cheaply. Like Scott, my next acquisition will be a .270 WSM. I am an avid handloader and think that I can cook up an accurate load that won't be far behind the .257 Weatherby in terms of long-range trajectory.

The 7mm Ultra Mag is considerably over bore capacity for the caliber--that is, the case holds significantly more powder than can be burned in a barrel of reasonable length. In addition to being inefficient and expensive to shoot or load for, the large volume/weight of powder that is expelled every time you pull the trigger ensures that you get a solid thump on the back end, as well. You can buy ammo by mail from one of the large suppliers (like Cabela's or Lock, Stock and Barrel), but will have to pay a hazardous material shipping fee. So if you opt to buy factory ammo that way, you should order 5 or so boxes at a time. As the previous post noted, you can always handload for it. If you are not alreaday set up to load ammo, though, it will take a few years to ammortize the cost of getting set up with a press, scale, dies and the other paraphernalia that you will need. The cheapest way to start is with Lyman hand tools, but I doubt that they would work that well with such a large case. Good luck!

Hi, Amanda: Just out of curiousity, are the times stamped on the postings GMT? I notice that they don't seem to correlate with any US time zone. Thanks! Ben