Dale Earnhardt Jr. Recalls His Dad Firing Off A 12-Gauge From The Porch To Wake Up All Of His Friends After A Party

The Intimidator strikes again.

Last week, Prime Video premiered the first two episodes of their four-part series Earnhardt, which focuses on the life and legacy of the late, great Dale Earnhardt. Featuring interviews from Dale’s friends, family, and obviously his son, Dale Jr., the documentary also features never-before-seen footage of Dale during his racing career from both his personal and professional life.

It’s an incredibly interesting, and nuanced, look at Dale Earnhardt the race car driver, the man, the friend and the father, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.  and his sister Kelley played a huge part in the production of the series, in addition to being heavily featured in it, telling stories about their dad and memories that were both good and bad. In the lead up to the release, they did a ton of press and talked a lot about their dad and his legacy, and Dale Jr. told a great one during a recent appearance on Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast.

For a while when he was young, Dale Jr. lived in a double-wide trailer on his father’s land in Mooresville, North Carolina, and if you’re newer to NASCAR, then you may not be aware that Jr. was quite a party animal back in the day. For as hard as he raced, he partied harder, and there are some legendary stories about his younger years.

Harvick asked Jr. about his dad’s visits to the trailer, where Jr. often had big parties, and it’s actually where Harvick took his wife on their first date… Harvick had heard that Dale Sr. would barge into the trailer when he was mad, and while that wasn’t completely true, Jr. did recall a time when his dad woke him and about a dozen of his friends up after a wild night in a way that only he could.

He showed up with 12-gauge shotgun and fired it off right there on the porch:

“When he was mad at me, I’ll say he never ran into the trailer… but one time, we did have a party and everybody’s asleep in the floor. Like I mean, there’s 12 or so of my friends all sleeping in the floor of the living room, dining room, everywhere, right. He walked in there, opened the front door and fired a 12-gauge shotgun out the front door to wake us all up. Standing on the porch, shot that shotgun.”

That sounds like the worst possible wake up call ever, but it’s exactly what I would expect from Dale Earnhardt. You just can’t make this kind of stuff up… I don’t know if he was mad with how late they were sleeping, or he just wanted to mess with them, but I have to imagine it was a nightmare if they were all waking up hungover.

Harvick also recalled walking into Dale Earnhardt’s office one time with former race car driver Ron Hornaday Jr. and asking him to teach them how to shoot a shotgun. He called it one of the “most intimidating things” he’s ever done, which is super on brand and completely understandable:

“Still one of the most intimidating things I’ve ever done was walk up into his office with Hornaday for the first time. I walked up in there, and we had decided that we were not very good at golf and we wanted to shoot shotguns. So we walk up into his office, and he’s got his glasses on, he’s got piles paper all over his desk. You know how he was, he’d sit there like this and he’d look over his glasses.

‘What do you two idiots want?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, nice to you as well.’ I’m thinking in my mind, you would never say that. and Hornaday says, ‘Well, we wanna learn how to shoot guns.’ He said, ‘Well, shouldn’t you guys be working on your race cars?’ And I didn’t, I had no clue what to say, Hornaday would banter back-and-forth with him. And finally we got to the point, he’s like, ‘Ron, you go down and get the truck, Kevin, you come with me.’ And we walk back and he had that little knife, gun room with with all the guns and everything in it.

That’s why I got my first shotgun. He gave me a Remington shotgun, and I still I still have it today. and he sent Danny, you remember Danny that used to work for Remington, the trick shooter? He sent Danny, he called him up and he said, ‘Hey, can you take these two morons out to learn how to shoot these guns? I don’t need them shooting their foot off.'”

I can only imagine how much a gun like that would be worth now considering it belong to Dale Earnhardt, but what a cool thing to have and something I’m sure Harvick will cherish forever.

You can watch them talk about it here:

@harvickhappypod @Dale Earnhardt Jr and @KevinHarvick both have stories that involve Dale Earnhardt and a shotgun. #NASCAR ♬ original sound – Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour

I can’t recommend highly enough watch the entire four-episode Earnhardt series as well, because it’s really incredible and the first two episodes are streaming now on Prime Video.

The post Dale Earnhardt Jr. Recalls His Dad Firing Off A 12-Gauge From The Porch To Wake Up All Of His Friends After A Party first appeared on Whiskey Riff.