Outdoor Boys is one of the biggest outdoor YouTube channels out there. Its main stars are Luke Nichols and his sons Tommy, Nate and Jacob, all of whom go on exciting adventures in the best natural places of Alaska, Virginia and beyond.
One thing about Outdoor Boys is that their videos are as entertaining as educational, drawing millions of people to watch them having the best times out there in the wild, whether they’re camping, boating, or just having fun. On top of that, Luke’s passion for fishing has led him to build a massive social media and YouTube audience, turning him into a surprising but very successful online star.
Nonetheless, there are a lot of questions regarding Outdoor Boys, including what Luke’s background is, how he built such a big YouTube channel, why comments aren’t allowed on their videos, and a lot more. Keep with us to learn the untold truth about Outdoor Boys.
What Is YouTube’s Outdoor Boys?
Luke Nichols and his sons have led us through hundreds of adventures on Outdoor Boys. The channel’s name is self-explanatory about its content, but the videos that they share are quite varied, and never age, going from many activities that fulfill not only the hearts of the Nichols’ family, but also their audience’s.
It’s not simple to explain Outdoor Boys content in one word, though, as the channel is close to hitting the 500 videos mark as of mid-2025, marking their 10th anniversary in the best way possible. Though that number is certainly big, the many videos they post are always high quality and entertaining. This also adds another layer to the great and varied things they do as a team.
While Luke and his sons spend most of their time in their native Alaska, it’s not rare for the family to go on adventures in Florida or Utah, among others. They’ve also extended their adventure schedule to international lands, visiting Iceland, Japan, Portugal, and many others.
To keep up to date with the Outdoor Boys’ family adventure outside of YouTube, you can find them under the same name on Instagram and Facebook, where they’re followed by more than a million people combined.
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How The Channel Began
The success that Outdoor Boys has as a YouTube channel might be impressive, but surprisingly enough, it wasn’t meant to become that in the beginning. The channel is the perfect definition of a happy accident in online content terms, as he began posting fishing videos around the time his oldest son Tommy was born.
The choice to turn into a worldwideknown YouTube star was not deliberate on Luke’s part, as it was just a pastime that helped him take some time off from the stagnant situation that his law firm was going through back then. As Luke affirmed in an interview with the In The Bush Podcast, he and his business partner at the time didn’t have similar ideas about where the direction their firm was going, so when he received the first check from YouTube, he figured out that making a lot of money from it could be of help in case something bad happened to the firm.
That’s when Luke decided to turn the then-small YouTube channel into something bigger by studying the success of other channels. At that point, Luke’s experience with filming and editing was very limited, but he considered how other content was doing well, and figured out that he could do better. The rest is history.
What’s Luke’s Background?
Luke Nichols was born in Alaska, where he lived until he was 19 years old. From then on, he spent two years in Japan on a church mission, which also entailed him to learn the Japanese language.
Following that period, which he described as ‘the most amazing experience of my life’, Luke returned to the US, where he enrolled at the Utah-based Brigham Young University (BYU). There, he studied Political Science from 1996 to 2004, later starting a political consulting business called Spectrum. After three years in the field, Luke decided that the environment of his profession wasn’t positive for his family life, deciding then to enroll at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University in Virginia.
After earning a Juris Doctorate in Criminal and Immigration Law, Luke started a firm called Nichols & Green, PLC.Spectrum which closed in 2020,then Legal Defense, which was in business from 2009 to 2013.
According to Luke’s LinkedIn profile, he’s a certified instructor for Standardized Field Sobriety and Law Enforcement tests.
Family Life & Faith
Despite being a family-centered YouTube channel, Outdoor Boys’ content doesn’t get into deep aspects of the Nichols’ lives, such as their faith. However, Luke and his wife, Rebecca, revealed in a video for the Facebook page Seeking Christ In Alaska that they belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days.
It was through the Church that Luke met his then-future wife Rebecca in the late 1990s. Both of them attended BYU, but while Luke describes her as a very committed student, he admitted to having taken ‘too long’ to finish his undergraduate degree. While not much is known about Rebecca, except that she’s from Salt Lake City, Utah, the pair has been revealed to have tied the knot in 2001. They lived in Utah and Virginia, but it wasn’t until they moved to the latter that they welcomed their oldest son Tommy in 2015. Eventually, Nathan and Jacob were born to complete their wonderful family of five.
Besides his wife and sons, Luke isn’t afraid to show his support for the rest of his family. That includes his sister Melanie Nichols, who is an author whom he’s promoted on his social media. He also did the same for his other sister, Carinne, who owns a successful YouTube channel and online business a marketing miniature artifacts such as dollhouses and furniture among others.
Why Are The Channel’s Comments Turned Off?
One common question among new viewers of Outdoor Boys is why the channel’s comment section is deactivated. The reason was explained by Luke in a 2019 video, in which he revealed that malicious people left ‘inappropriate comments’ about his children on his videos, which he qualified as coming from the ‘seedy underbelly of the internet’.
To prevent this type of incident, YouTube deactivated the comments sections of videos in which children under 13 years old appeared, including the Outdoor Boys channel. That said, Luke and Rebecca seemed to agree with the platform’s decision to protect their children.
Other Channels & Impact
Besides Outdoor Boys, Luke Nichols also shares videos on the Catfish and Carp YouTube channel. The latter has around 1.1 million subscribers byas of early 2025, which is a far cry from the 14.7 million users who subscribed to his content on the main channel, but the great thing about this secondary channel is that it allows Luke to focus on his biggest hobby-fishing for carp and catfish.
It’s not easy to sum up the impact that the Outdoor Boys’ channel has had, but its numbers give us an idea of how great it is. To date, the Nichols’ videos have been watched 2.5 billion times, without counting the 300 million views they’ve accumulated in their Catfish and Carp videos.
However, the biggest impact that the Nichols have had is to teach us how to make the internet a better place, by posting fulfilling and wholesome content.
