Why is Jacob no longer in the ‘Outdoor Boys’ videos? His absence explained

Fans of the popular family vlog channel, the Outdoor Boys have been concerned over a noticeable absence of Luke’s son, Jacob.

Luke Nichols makes vlog style videos documenting his camping, forging, cooking and other such adventures in the great outdoors. His three children and his wife usually feature in his videos as clearly they are just as passionate about their outdoor excursions as he is. The channel is incredibly popular with over 9 million subscribers, and it’s easy to see why, the enthusiasm from Luke and his kids is infectious – just watching a few of their vlogs will make you want to hike out into the woods and be with nature.

Jacob is Luke’s youngest son and has appeared in the camping vlogs ever since he was old enough to walk. However, the young boy’s sudden absence caused some concern after he stopped appearing in videos without any kind of explanation from his father. 

What happened to Jacob?

So do we know what actually happened to Jacob? Some people are assuming the worst, we’ve seen family YouTube channels end in disaster before, but could such a thing happen again? A fake video posted in 2023 to TikTok implied that Jacob had been kidnapped and his father had killed the kidnapper. In case you’re worried, the creator of that video confirmed that it was fake, Jacob has not been kidnapped – why the video is still up is kind of baffling though.

Another video talking about the boy’s disappearance posted to TikTok in February caused more discussion in the comments. The video suggests that perhaps he needed time for “personal reflection,” or to “pursue other passions,” although I don’t think many kids his age are taking time out for personal reflection, so we’ll put that theory on the back burner for a minute.

Some believed that he had ‘almost died’ although this might be because they had seen the fake video from last year. Others had a much more innocent and plausible explanation, claiming they had seen another video that stated Jacob had been falling behind in school and his family were making him focus on his grades before he could go camping with his father again.

Jacob is fine guys

Before the end of last year, Jacob was appearing in tons of videos on the channel, so when he suddenly stopped, fans noticed pretty fast. However, this doesn’t mean that anything sinister is afoot – people tend to forget that these people have lives outside of YouTube, at the end of the day they are still a normal family from Alaska.

Although the video explaining Jacob’s absence that was mentioned in the replies to the TikTok seems to be missing, it’s pretty clear that nothing bad has happened to him and that he may just have said he didn’t want to be featured as much. Luke continues to make content and his youngest son has appeared in a few videos since so obviously he’s okay. Jacob is just in the videos a little less than fans might be used to, but perhaps that’s for the best for now.