NASCAR driver Chase Briscoe says the biggest adrenaline rush in his life no longer comes from racing at nearly 200 miles per hour — it comes from deer hunting.
“It’s the closest thing I’ve ever been able to come to racing, and honestly, I feel like it’s surpassed racing,” Briscoe told OutKick OutDoors.
Briscoe, who drives the No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota, said the shift makes sense once you consider how often he’s on track. “We race 38 weekends a year that, truthfully, the adrenaline kind of goes away because you do it all the time,” he said. “Getting to go hunting and getting to feel that adrenaline is like this drug that I can’t get rid of.”
Briscoe’s connection to the outdoors traces back to Indiana, where he grew up spending Sundays at his grandfather’s pond. “Ever since I was a little kid, I remember we would go over there every Sunday and would just spend time outside, out by the pond fishing,” he said. Fishing with friends became a regular pastime through his high school years, as they sought out farm ponds and creeks around town.
Hunting came later, after Briscoe moved to North Carolina. He and his family bought about 30 acres that turned out to be full of deer, and a few years ago he decided to try hunting for the first time. “I went for the first time and just fell in love with it,” he said.
Beyond the thrill, Briscoe says hunting offers something rarer in his life: quiet. He and his wife, Marissa, have three children, and between family life and his racing career, downtime is scarce. “For me, it’s been just an amazing getaway,” he said. “Just to kind of be able to get out in the outdoors and start my morning and just watch the sun come up, or just go out there and be by myself.”
A Four-Year-Old With a Plan
Lately, Briscoe hasn’t been hunting alone. His four-year-old son, Brooks, has taken to it with enthusiasm. “Brooks is ate up with it,” Briscoe said.
As North Carolina’s deer season opened, father and son had already been talking strategy. “Last night we were talking about it,” Briscoe said. “I said, ‘Hey, tomorrow deer season starts. I won’t be home, but Monday maybe you can go with me.’ And he was jumping up and down.”
Briscoe recalled a conversation from about a month and a half earlier that surprised him. “We were just driving down the road, and he said, ‘Hey Dad, I want to talk to you about something,'” Briscoe said. “I was like, ‘Okay.’ He’s only 4, and he said, ‘I think this year I’m just gonna just shoot bucks this year. No more does.'”
Brooks has some results to back up the confidence. The first time he ever went hunting with his father, he got a buck. “It was a total, like, one of those Hollywood stories, I guess,” Briscoe said. “Not that it was — I mean, it was a tiny little four-pointer — but for him, it was his first experience going out there, and he got to do it.”
The following season, Brooks took it further, lining up and pulling the trigger on a doe largely on his own, with his father’s help. Briscoe noted it took him about a year and a half to get his own first buck. “He definitely was beating me already,” he said.
Passing Down Memories
For Briscoe, the point isn’t the size of the antlers or the number of fish caught — it’s the time spent together, away from screens. “There’s so many distractions in today’s world with phones and tablets and TV and just everything else,” he said. “For me to be able to get them outside and just get away from all those distractions. You get to spend one-on-one time and just make a lot of great memories.”
Those memories echo his own childhood. “I remember going fishing with my grandpa, and some of those memories are some of my favorite memories as a kid,” Briscoe said. Now, he says, he gets to be on the other side of that experience with his own son.
Briscoe has already ventured beyond North Carolina for hunting trips, including two consecutive years in South Texas. Looking ahead, he’d like to try an elk or mule deer hunt out west, and is particularly drawn to the idea of bow hunting elk. “I think that would be one of the coolest things to do, is get an elk and get one that close,” he said, though he admitted the extensive hiking involved holds less appeal.
If that trip happens, Briscoe already has a hunting partner in mind. “He would have the energy too, to be hiking and walking around all the time,” he said of Brooks. “So yeah, if we get to do it one day, maybe he’ll go with me.”
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