Valerius Geist near his home on Vancouver Island, November 2002. Photo by David Petersen

What can be said about Valerius Geist that has not already been eloquently stated? One would be hard-pressed to find anyone more knowledgeable on matters concerning the behavior of cervids, thus his name comes up in countless conversations and debates. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Geist has spent countless hours afield wearing many hats: scientist, conservationist, hunter, angler and just pure-and-simple outdoors addict. His studies, writing, teaching and artwork have all deepened the world’s knowledge of many species, among them elk. It is for these reasons that Geist is the fitting recipient of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s 2004 Olaus J. Murie Award.

The Olaus J. Murie Award honors wildlife and land management professionals whose work significantly contributes to the betterment of wild elk and the places they live. Olaus Murie worked as a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Biological Survey (the predecessor to the Fish and Wildlife Service) from 1920 to 1946, where his service led him to many far-reaching points around North America, from Alaska to Labrador. He founded the Wilderness Society and served as its first president. But Murie is probably best known among elk circles for his studies of elk and their habitat around Jackson, Wyoming. It was from this research that Murie wrote the groundbreaking book, Elk of North America, in 1951. The Olaus J. Murie Award honors his accomplishments as a leader in big game management and recognizes and celebrates those who have become leaders in their own right.

In Murie’s footsteps, Valerius Geist has certainly established himself as a leader in the world of big game biology and management. If you have questions on any matter concerning a wild creature with four legs, hooves and hair, you need only Geist’s phone number and plenty of recording tapes; he will be happy to enlighten you. Over the years, Geist has developed many theories that were first considered hair-brained by some, but later came to be widely accepted. Geist was one of the first scientists to link game farming with maladies like chronic wasting disease, which he addressed in several of his books, including Elk Country. One view of Geist’s that is still not widely accepted is that all six North American elk subspecies are one and the same; that they just adapted to different habitat types.

Geist was born in Ukraine in 1938 to a Russian father and German mother, both marine engineers for the Russian military. After receiving word in 1943 that his father had died from tuberculosis while attempting to escape the approaching German army, Geist fled with his mother and grandmother to Austria and then to Germany. It was not until years later that Geist learned his father had died of a brain tumor in 1952. Upon Russian occupation of East Germany in 1953, the family then emigrated to Canada, where they settled in Saskatchewan.

Geist earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from the University of British Columbia in 1960, the same year he became a Canadian citizen. But it was in the following years spent deep in wild places where he gained his vast knowledge of wildlife and their habitats. It began with a study of feral goats in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, followed by a moose study in British Columbia. Beginning in 1961, he studied Stone’s sheep, bighorn sheep and Dall’s sheep in the wilds for six years. In 1963, while studying bighorns in Alberta’s Banff National Park, Geist also observed the region’s abundant elk herds. It was there that his fascination for elk kicked into high gear. He, his wife Renate and their two young children lived for years in a one-room cabin in the wilderness of Banff National Park, observing and literally living among the mountain sheep, elk and mule deer.

“He has always had a passion, and that passion was wildlife,” says Renate, who acts as her husband’s fact checker and chief critic. “I think he was born with that, and it has been the main focus of his life.”

In 1966, Geist earned a doctorate in ethology (the study of animal behavior). He and Renate then returned to Germany for a year where Geist conducted postdoctoral research and studied captive European cervids, especially the elk’s cousin, the red deer. Following his postdoctoral year at the institute of Nobel Laureate Konrad Lorenz, Geist joined the faculty of the University of Calgary, where he was a professor of environmental studies and biology from 1968 until he retired in 1995. There he guided many graduate students through their research projects on different species, but never forgot to spend time each year in the field studying big game here and abroad.

“Elk were a perpetual theme,” Geist says of the many masters and doctoral candidates he worked with.

As far as his own studies of wild elk go, Geist says he feels his work has helped “to decipher in detail the adaptive strategies of elk. That means that I am not only interested in their behavior, but the link between their behavior and the ecology. This gives me some insight as to how these animals should be managed.”

This insight has not been lost on wildlife managers and big game hunters, thanks in part to Geist sharing his research, knowledge and ideas through 15 books, seven wildlife policy reports, more than 120 scholarly papers, book chapters and commentaries, many magazine articles and contributions to documentary films covering an array of wildlife topics and species. Of particular note to elk enthusiasts is Geist’s written and illustrated chapter in the latest edition of North American Elk, called “Adaptive Behavioral Strategies,” as well as his book, Elk Country, which was one of a seven-part series of books, each on a different big game species. Both of these books are among the most authoritative available about the biology, behavior and social dynamics of elk.

“It [Elk Country] was an attempt at bringing the general public—and the hunter in particular—a detailed and scientific account of elk behavior as we knew it, illustrated by the excellent photography of Michael Francis,” Geist says.

Shane Mahoney, an accomplished writer and biologist from Newfoundland who is among Geist’s best friends and colleagues, spent the better part of two years in the late 1990s living with the Geists at their home on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where he studied, wrote and conversed with his mentor.

“Most people who have had the good fortune of meeting Dr. Geist meet an individual of extraordinary intellectual capacity,” says Mahoney. “He is a man deeply committed to the world of ideas, a man whose generosity of spirit is equal to the capacity of his intellect, a man who is ever willing to share ideas and share his knowledge, always delighted to learn new things, fun to be around, very high energy.”

It is perhaps Geist’s willingness and sheer enthusiasm for sharing what he knows that make him such an extraordinary person. A typical conversation with Geist will always hit the topics at hand, but almost as certainly it will go off track and one might find himself learning something he never expected like: “Chickens haven’t had teeth in 70 million years, but if you take a chicken embryo and you apply mouse mesoderm to the beak bud, the embryo develops perfectly good reptilian teeth.”

When asked how he would like to be remembered, the man who has been compared to Olaus J. Murie, Ernest Thomas Seton and Aldo Leopold had a concise reply: “As an honest scientist . . . that’s all.”