About

Outdoor Boys is an adventure and survival-themed YouTube channel launched by Luke Nichols in 2015. The channel features Nichols, his wife Rebecca, and their three sons Tommy, Nate and Jacob doing outdoor activities like camping, fishing and hunting, sometimes in extreme environments. The channel gained traction rapidly after the year 2022, with Nichols gaining 12 million subscribers in 18 months. In May 2025, Nichols announced that he would be stepping back from his YouTube channel, citing concerns about how the rapid growth in popularity would affect his family. The announcement sparked a wave of both positive and negative reactions toward Luke and his family, as well as memes about the departure from his content creation.

History

Luke Nichols was born in 1978 in Anchorage, Alaska. Before his YouTube career, he worked as a criminal defense and immigration attorney, co-founding Nichols & Green PLLC in Fairfax, Virginia.^[1] He launched his fishing YouTube channel "Catfish and Carp" on November 28th, 2013, and his family YouTube channel "Outdoor Boys" on May 4th, 2015.

Luke Nichols' wife, Rebecca Reimann Nichols, and his three sons, Tommy, Nate and Jacob, play an integral role in the Outdoor Boys channel, often appearing in videos and supporting behind the scenes.

Nichols' first YouTube^[2] video was posted on May 16th, 2015, and shows one of his sons playing the air guitar. The post gathered over 300,000 views in 10 years.

Nichols continued to post outdoor content featuring his family in the late 2010s, with his first notably viral video^[3] being a December 20th, 2017, post titled, "Epic Bike Crash – Tommy's balance bike FAIL!" The post gathered over 24 million views in 8 years.

On December 21st, 2019, Outdoor Boys posted another viral YouTube^[4] video featuring his wife and children doing a Lego "Nerf Battle," gathering over 120 million views in six years.

Online Presence

Luke Nichols' content began gaining significant traction online in the months leading up to 2025, with his channel gaining over 12 million followers in nearly 18 months.

On February 21st, 2024, Redditor /u/Steve_Hufnagel posted a video of Luke and Rebecca Nichols talking about their background to the subreddit /r/outdoorboys.^[7] The post gathered over 1,000 upvotes in a year.

Nichols also became the subject of a number of viral tweets in late 2024. On December 16th, 2024, X^[5] user @bigcontentguy tweeted a photo of Luke making his favourite camping dish, "honey butter bread," 26,000 likes in six months.

On December 18th, 2024, X^[6] user @reenzy tweeted a photo of Luke Nichols from the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel to respond to a tweet asking, "wtf r u even supposed to watch on youtube anymore." The post gathered over 200,000 likes in six months.

YouTube Hiatus Announcement

On May 17th, 2025, Luke Nichols announced that he would be taking a hiatus from posting on YouTube,^[8] saying that his channel's rising popularity has taken a toll on him and that he is concerned about the attention the Outdoor Boys channel was drawing to his family. He said that he is going to finish the few videos he has left in the pipeline and then take a step back from posting for an extended period of time.

The video accumulated over 13 million views, 1.7 million likes and an unknown number of comments due to the comment section being disabled.

Several internet users made posts expressing their appreciation for Nichols' content, with X^[9] user @KamuraShops sharing a video of Nichols punching a fish to death to commemorate his hiatus, gathering over 144,000 likes in three days.

My favorite Outdoor Boys moment. 😅 pic.twitter.com/Et65RkcNFD

— Kamura (@KamuraShops) May 17, 2025

Some internet users blamed Rebecca Nichols for Luke Nichols announcing his break from YouTube, including far-right political pundit Nick Fuentes, who wrote on his X^[10] account that same day, "He says him & his wife decided he should quit so their family can 'be normal.' I bet his wife made him do it," receiving over 40,000 likes and 1,900 replies in three days.

Also on May 17th, X^[11] user @YungPutin1 blamed Rebecca Nichols for Luke Nichols taking a hiatus from the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel, writing, "My wife and I have decided I'm too popular and my videos in the woods by myself are too cool to keep doing." The post received over 5 million views and 16,000 likes in three days.

On May 19th, 2025, X^[12] user @CaribbeanRythms responded to a tweet calling Rebecca Nichols "ugly" and criticized people for being resentful of Luke Nichols taking a break from YouTube to make time for his family. The tweet garnered over 4.2 million views and 96,000 likes in a day.

Also on May 19th, X^[13] user @NewRightPoast posted a tweet about Luke Nichols quitting YouTube to protect his family and give them a normal life, saying that he made the right choice, and gathering over 40,000 likes in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References