Outdoor Boys' completely different life before YouTube revealed as old footage resurfaces
People have found footage of Luke Nichols of Outdoor Boys fame from way back in the day, when he - ironically - spent a lot more of his time indoors.
The much-loved YouTuber grew his channel to 18 million subscribers, who all enjoyed seeing him and his sons out in the wilderness, before he announced he was stepping back from doing it.
"I'm not just talking about the time and energy I spend making YouTube videos. I'm also talking about the attention it brings," Luke explained, adding that his popularity was reaching a point where it was getting out of hand for him and his family.
He said he found the 'sheer volume of fans trying to contact me' very 'overwhelming', so the decision had been made to step away so his family could live 'normal lives'.
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Despite his departure from YouTube, he did recently sub in for a fellow wildlife YouTuber to keep his channel going while he was dealing with a family emergency.
He appeared on the MyLifeOutdoors channel to cover for his friend Steven, who is caring for his wife following her cancer diagnosis, with many people taking the chance to tell him how much they liked his videos.
However, there's another video with him that people enjoyed discovering, and that's footage from back in 2012, where he was talking about his law firm.
That's right, the popular outdoors-y YouTuber had a law career before he was famous, and the old video showed him and his law partner standing in front of a wall of their certificates, letting people in northern Virginia know that if they needed criminal defence or an expert on traffic law, then they were your guys.
It actually wouldn't be long afterwards that Luke would really get into YouTube, launching his first channel, Catfish & Carp, in 2013.
He released a series of fishing videos until 2015, when he launched the Outdoor Boys channel, and his fanbase grew significantly.
Five years later, Luke was able to put his law work on hold to fully dedicate himself to running Outdoor Boys, though earlier this year, he made his goodbye announcement as he said he'd be putting the channel on hold indefinitely.
A few recent videos were released, which had fans excited about a potential comeback, though Luke had said he would be working on some unfinished projects and releasing them by the end of the year.
Speaking about his decision to return and sub in for Steven on MyLifeOutdoors, Luke said: "Some of you may know that Steven, with the MyLifeOutdoors YouTube channel, is helping his wife battle cancer while also raising four kids and running a YouTube channel.
"That's a lot to deal with, so I made a video for him to have and post exclusively on his channel so that he didn't have to worry about making a video over the holidays."
Joe Harker