Trying to share his love for the outdoors with friends went horribly wrong. It’s no secret that the outlaw legend, Hank Williams Jr., is an avid outdoorsman outside of his music career. From a young age, Hank Jr. has been in the woods, and his love for the outdoors —hunting, fishing, and respect for the land — has not faded one bit as he’s aged. Back in 1992, Bocephus sat down and talked about his love for the outdoors. He shared some stories about the wildlife he’d interacted with over the years. “My life and the outdoors, be it hunting and fishing, was passed down to me from my great grandfather, grandfather, and father. They were all hunters and fishermen; Daddy loved hunting and fishing.”  He talks about how even though Sr. passed when he was three, his grandfather, who lived in South Alabama, would spend time with him in the woods—this time with his grandfather really solidified his love for the outdoors. As Hank Jr. got older, he loved to share his passion for the outdoors with his friends, bringing them along on hunts and allowing cameras to capture him in a tree stand. One of his friends, Joe Nichols, recently sat down with Dillon Weldon on the Drifting Cowboy podcast and shared that he had the honor of hunting one time with Hank Williams Jr., but his white lie of how experienced a hunter he was came back to bite him in the butt big time. “I went to Hank Jr.’s house. First time I’ve spent time with Hank Jr. He wanted to go hunting, he wanted to take me turkey hunting. And I’m like, ‘Yeah, absolutely, let’s go hunting.’ He’s like, ‘Ever been hunting before?’  I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah!’ Lie. I’d been hunting before, but I’d never took it serious. I never had a rifle, so I never really got to hunt that much. I was more into fishing. He was like, ‘Yeah, bring your 12-gauge and we’ll go do this and this.’ I’m like, ‘Alright, I’ll go do that.’ I had to go get a 12-gauge…” Joe Nichols was entirely under the impression that he was going to join Hank Jr. for some light hunting and maybe target practice, but that the two men would spend more time writing music, drinking whiskey, and shooting the s*** with each other. “I’m thinking I’m going to go down to hang out with Hank Jr. for a couple of days, and we’re gonna get hammered, and we’re going to play ‘The Blues Man’ and ‘Family Tradition,’ and we’re just going to sit around a campfire and play music. That’s what I thought was going to happen.” Well, that impression of the weekend was far from what truly unfolded: Well, Hank Jr. really meant hunting. CMT came and brought a camera crew down there; they were going to do this show with Hank Jr. called ‘Hank’s Wildlife Adventures,’ or something like that. This was going to be one of the first episodes of this show; he was going to take me hunting for turkeys. He thought I’d been hunting, and it was a trainwreck. It was a disaster! I showed up and I got this gun I’ve never fired before and I’ve got a half gallon of whiskey and I’ve got a guitar, and I’m like ‘Alright, it’s going to be a good time.’ He handed me this turkey call — and it’s a drum. It’s a little drum thing and striker, which I didn’t know what the hell it was. He goes, ‘Here, work on that, we’ll get your gobble whatever right.’ Although Nichols was very surprised to see the camera crew and had to come to the realization that he needed to buckle up, not to make himself look like a fool, all those efforts were right out the window when Hank Jr. handed him a pot call, which is a two-handed friction-based turkey call that can create a wide variety of turkey sounds. Although this kind of call is usually considered easy to use, the odds were not in Nichols’ favor, quickly revealing that he was not the seasoned hunter Hank Jr. thought he had invited to his cabin. “He turns that way, the camera is on me, and I’m like (makes an inaudible noise). At this age right now, I can look back and go, my god, that had to be the dumbest thing anybody has ever done on camera. He turns around and sees me and goes, ‘What the hell is wrong with you? What are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘Uh, I don’t know how this works. I don’t know what I’m doing.’ I think at that moment he’s like, ‘Oh no. Oh god. Okay. He’s never been hunting before.'” Nichols says that the event was just one thing after another, and he was still drinking at the time, which led to total disaster. Of course, all of this was captured on camera for CMT, and it all came to a head when they got into the stand the next morning. Hank Jr kept having to wake up Nichols to take shots, and they finally got one, but Nichols still stands by the whole thing being a disaster. A few months ago, Nichols bumped into Hank Jr. and learned that the country music legend had created a little joke out of the disastrous event. “A couple of months ago, I did a show with him in South Carolina, and we caught up. He started talking about the Joe Nichols blind, and I’m like, ‘The what?’ He said, ‘I never told you I named that blind after you.’ I’m like, ‘You did what?’  He goes, ‘That was such a traumatic, funny, awesome story.’ Because he had way more story about it. He goes, ‘I had named that blind after you. After the disaster that was…'” Nichols laughed it off, saying that having Hank Williams Jr. name a blind after him was an honor yet so embarrassing. Hey, you win some, lose most… What a story. Check out the whole interview while you’re here. The post Joe Nichols Once Went Hunting With Hank Williams Jr. Not Knowing It Would Be Filmed For A TV Show: “It Was Trainwreck” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.