Lakoskys featured attraction

For 26 years now, Hugh Crittenden has been putting on the Virginia Outdoor Sportsman Show. It's the longest running and best-attended show of its kind in the state, despite focusing exclusively on hunting.

Crittenden, a full-time taxidermist, could put forward the same show every year with the same exhibits, same guest speakers, same everything. He could rest on his laurels, but that's just not his style.

"One of the hardest things for a show promoter to do is not to go to sleep and keep his mind on what he's doing," he said. "It's so easy for somebody to just do the same old thing all the time. I try to keep it as young and live as possible."

To that end,Crittenden has brought in two celebrity guests whom he hopes will help return attendance to around 20,000 from the 19,000 it slipped to last year. In the world of hunting, it doesn't get any more "young and live" than Lee and Tiffany Lakosky.

In just six years, the married couple, who live on and manage 5,000 prime whitetail acres in eastern Iowa, rocketed to fame as the stars of "Gettin' Close with Lee and Tiffany." That show, which became among the most popular of any outdoor-themed show on television, followed the newlyweds as they went from chemical engineer and flight attendant, respectively, to professional hunters and game managers on their Iowa homestead.

Their new show, "The Crush with Lee and Tiffany," premiered January on the Outdoor channel and already has achieved similar success. Simply put, Lee and Tiffany Lakosky are the hottest ticket going in outdoor TV.

"There's not a day that goes by that we're not like, 'Can you even believe this?'" Tiffany Lakosky said of how much their life has changed in recent years. "This is nothing we set out to do. Lee's a chemical engineer by trade and I was a flight attendant."

The Lakoskys will give seminars at 7 p.m. Friday and 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, but Tiffany said their style is different from many others on the outdoor show circuit.

"We really make it about the people that are out in the audience because we've found that everybody comes to hear something [different]," she said. "So instead of us yapping about what we think maybe somebody wants to hear about, we'll ask them what they want to hear about."

Despite the fact that they make 40 appearances a year, Tiffany said, "At every show, somebody asks something that you haven't heard before."

A common one: "'What's your favorite recipe?' That's always a funny one because I'm not much of a cook," she said.

Another common line of questioning from crusty old hunters is whether Tiffany really is the hunter the TV show makes her out to be.

Crittenden, who's known the Lakoskys for three years, is convinced she's the real deal.

"You don't see very often a husband and wife team that is good and kill deer on a regular basis and have as much land as they personally do," he said. "Tiff is a nice looking young lady, but she is also a hardcore hunter. There's no doubt about it. She goes out and spends time in the outdoors and spends time in the weather and everything else."

Just last year, Tiffany told me, explaining the quality deer management techniques they practice on their Iowa farm, she passed up a 180-inch buck because it was young, about 3½ years old. She's killed bigger, and those are the rules. Not many Virginia whitetail hunters would pass up a buck like that.

Crittenden said that in addition to the usual displays and outfitters at the show, "I try to entertain the kids and have a lot of women's things in the show, too. If I can keep the women and the kids there, the man has a chance to walk around and buy the things that he needs."

This year it seems unlikely those displays lined up for women and kids will be well attended when the Lakoskys take the floor.

Contact Andy Thompson at