Our Toyota Tundra TRD Pro Was Shot At by Smooth-Brain Morons

It might be your cousin, co-worker, or neighbor. They daily-drive a brodozer—a lifted pickup with oversized tires, fiberglass flares, and a suspension worth more than a small house. Like gazelles to a watering hole, they are drawn to the deserted areas of this country with their side-by-sides, dirt bikes, and ATVs in tow, Monster energy drink in hand. A great weekend migration of the like-minded. They are bros, and they’re having more fun than you are.

In our yearlong review fleet, perhaps no vehicle is bro-ier than our 2023 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro. You don’t have to be the brightest light bar on the roof rack to recognize a bro truck when you see one. Whether it’s the eye-popping Solar Octane orange paint, the digital camouflage wheel arches and seat trim, or the gaping black grill with a built-in light bar, our Tundra TRD Pro’s styling is aimed squarely at the Brosephs among us. Throughout my time with our long-term Tundra, I’ve often been on the receiving end of a complimentary, “Nice truck, bro!”

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The Plan

We go through great pains to treat our yearlong test vehicles like their owners would, so to really test our Tundra TRD Pro, I needed to assume the lifestyle and lean into it.

Becoming a bro takes time, effort, and access to aftermarket equipment and expensive off-road toys. Because the Tundra TRD Pro is already well-equipped from the factory, I decided on a few key modifications that would allow me to experience the life without bro-ing overboard.

Once the Tundra was outfitted appropriately, I would spend the weekend in full bro mode. I would camp, explore, have fun, and see how the other bros live.

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The Mods

My plan was to mount a rooftop tent on the Tundra, leaving the bed open for storage. Go Rhino provided a set of their XRS crossbars that mount in the Tundra’s bed using its tie-down rail system.

The no-drill installation process for the cross bars was straightforward; the only hiccup came in the lack of clearance between the bolts that hold the rail system into the sides of the Tundra’s bed and the crossbar bolts that you slide into the rails. I ended up using a small wood block and not so gently hitting it with a rubber mallet to get the bolts home. Once in place, it was quick to get everything attached and tightened down. Go Rhino also provided accessory rails to mount additional equipment such as traction boards and jerrycans.

If the bro code were printed on the backs of energy drink cans, I suspect “bros do not sleep on the ground” would be listed somewhere between “help a bro out” and “bros don’t leave a fist bump hanging.” A rooftop tent mounted above the bed would allow myself and my wife—an honorary bro for the trip—to sleep clear of the critters on the ground while keeping the bed open for camping and off-road recovery equipment, as well as the most important item for any weekend in the desert: a massive amount of firewood.

I chose a three-person Roofnest Condor 2 to mount on the Tundra, which is the smallest in Roofnest’s Condor lineup of fold-out tents and designed to sleep up to four. (Roofnest also offers a pure clamshell and smaller pop designs in its Falcon and Sparrow lines.) The Tundra’s 5.5-foot bed can accommodate larger Roofnest tents like the Condor 2 XL, but the smaller Condor 2 is compact and a little lighter at 155 pounds, making it easier to store when it isn’t on the truck.

After conscripting two bros to help lift the tent onto the crossbars, installation is straightforward. Four aluminum brackets attach to bolts that slide in a rail on the bottom of the tent, keeping it locked in place once everything’s tightened.

With the Tundra’s set up, the Go Rhino crossbars don’t sit very high above the bedsides, so even with the Condor 2 mounted, the whole assembly sat almost level with the roof of the Tundra. This meant that there were no clearance issues during daily trips into parking structures, and the aerodynamic impact was minimal.

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The Toy

To truly be a bro, you need some type of adrenaline-pumping off-road toy to go along with your big truck. My personal favorite? Side-by-sides. They offer an incredible amount of off-road performance and capability for a relatively low entrance fee. I say “relatively” because the side-by-side in question is a Polaris RZR Pro R Ultimate, which starts at $41,499. You get a lot of bangs for those bucks, though. The RZR Pro R features 32-inch tires on 15-inch wheels, electronically controlled suspension and drive modes, 16 inches of ground clearance with 29 inches of suspension travel, and a 2.0-liter I-4 making 225 horsepower. That much power and suspension travel gives it the ability to cover rough ground faster than most people (including this bro) feel comfortable.

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The Weekend

We were finally ready. Equipped with crossbars and a rooftop tent and with a side-by-side in tow, our Tundra TRD Pro had been transformed into the ultimate bro truck. With no shortage of epic desert locations in California, we chose a rocky outcropping near Johnson Valley OHV, home of the famous King of the Hammers race, as our destination.

Entering the freeway while towing the RZR, I instantly found a new appreciation for the Tundra’s 3.4-liter twin-turbo V-6 hybrid drivetrain. The hybrid’s 583 lb-ft of combined torque helps give the Toyota confident towing performance and an 11,175-pound maximum tow capacity—not that we were anywhere near that with the 2,500-pound the RZR PRO R and 1,900-pound trailer.

We arrived at Johnson Valley just before sunset and settled on an open flat area nestled near the foot of a large boulder pile for camp, allowing us some privacy from other groups. With a finite amount of daylight remaining, we quickly unloaded the RZR, donned our safety equipment, and let it rip on the puddle-speckled desert trails, snowcapped mountains glistening in the background.

As the sun set, we pulled the RZR back into camp and started settling in. After building the tent—an easy affair involving undoing some latches held in place by Velcro, opening the clamshell top, folding out the floor extension, and placing some tent poles—I built a raging campfire in the stone pit a previous camper had built. The fire, fueled by the wind and dry wood, burned fast, casting long shadows of our emerging campsite against the pale red rocks.

With the side-by-side parked next to the Tundra, I used the empty ramp trailer as a convenient place to set up my camp stove to make some dehydrated camp meals for dinner. They’re not the fanciest things in the world, but they would at least be warm and quick to prepare. Tucked up close to the raging fire, I was thoroughly enjoying my pasta primavera when the shooting started.

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The Incident

I’ll give my fellow bros the benefit of the doubt and assume they weren’t shooting at us on purpose (I think that might be part of the bro code), but they were shooting awful close.

At first, we just heard the rhythmic percussive pop, pop, pop of semi-automatic gunfire from another group camped a ways away. I grew up in a rural enough area that the sound of gunfire doesn’t immediately send up red flags, but I didn’t love the fact that it was fully dark at this point. Firing a weapon at night is dangerous and irresponsible, regardless of the remote location. And naively, I assumed that they weren’t firing into the darkness in our direction. Between our campfire, the Tundra’s headlights, and a large flashlight we used to finish setting up camp, surely they could see us, couldn’t they? And then a different noise joined the scene.

“How close does a bullet have to be before you hear it?” is one of those things you never want to have to Google. The fact that I even Googled it, sitting in my camp chair with a half-eaten bag of lukewarm, watery pasta, is still surreal to me. The whizzing of rounds zinging way too close for comfort overhead turned what was to that point a fun outing into something scary.

It honestly took me a second to process what was happening, but once I did, I grabbed my flashlight and started to shine it into the air. Surely, they could see us over here, right? Maybe it was the flashlight, or maybe the shooter just changed his aim, but the pops continued. Not cool, bro. Thankfully, I didn’t hear another round zing by our vicinity.

But who cares? Obviously, we were camping around a bunch of idiots unwilling to take the safety of their fellow bros seriously. My wife and I looked at each other in the flickering light of the fire and decided without much debate we were leaving.

It was now closing in on 9 p.m., and breaking down camp in the cold darkness of night with gunfire in the background is about as fun as you think it would be. We decided on the “throw everything in the truck and figure it out later” technique. At least our somewhat hurried pace was keeping us warm, because once we had doused the campfire, it started to get real cold, real quick.

Loading the side-by-side in the dark wasn’t difficult, but it did take a few minutes to unstow the ramps as well as the tie-down straps. The RZR Pro R’s auxiliary lightbar came in handy, shedding light on both the trailer and bed area of the Tundra as we repacked the rooftop tent.

With the side-by-side loaded and secured, we were then faced by the challenge of making our way back to the main road in the inky desert night. The area where we’d made camp was only a mile or so from the main road and seemed like a straight shot when it was light out. Now that it was dark, every small path and dirt bike trail crisscrossing the landscape caused me to doubt my route.

The Tundra TRD Pro’s integrated lightbar was worth its weight in gold here. Arguably one of its most bro-riffic features, the lightbar sits just below the Toyota logo in the grille and can only be activated when the Tundra’s high-beams are on. I found it to be incredibly useful to flood our surroundings with light as we picked our way down the sandy trail, eventually zigzagging through the sagebrush and onto the main road. Cold, tired, and pissed off, we made our way out of the desert and headed home.

The Situation

When I first envisioned this story, getting shot at (or near) wasn’t part of the plan. After our hasty departure from our desert campsite, my wife and I returned the following day with the RZR Pro R in tow. We spent most of the afternoon taking turns behind the wheel in adrenaline-fueled joy to forget our harrowing adventure from the previous evening. Seventy-five mph on the road doesn’t always feel fast, but on a narrow bumpy path across the desert floor, it feels like 150 mph.

I have been critical of our Tundra TRD Pro in the past, but after this bro-bonding session, I’ve come to think of it differently. While it’s not as comfortable or capable as a Ford F-150 Raptor off-road, on smooth highways it is a comfortable, capable tow vehicle that looks every bit as cool as the side-by-side it can effortlessly tow behind it. Instead of expecting the TRD Pro to then perform flawlessly off-road, leave that to your side-by-side, dirt bike, or ATV.  

I went into this weekend with the goal of dipping my toe into the energy-drink-filled pool of brodom, to see of it changed my opinion of the Tundra TRD Pro. Surprisingly, it did. It’s all about expectations and finding the correct use case for the truck, bro.

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Get To Know The Roofnest Condor 2

We’re no stranger to Roofnest’s tents and were eager to try the new Condor 2, the latest evolution in the brand’s rooftop tent lineup. Deploying the $3,545 tent is easy, although latching the ladder can be fiddly—a critical element because it must be set to the right height to keep the floor level. Inside the tent, we found adequate room for two romantically involved people. Headroom is tight, but 6-footers can sit up provided they stay on the taller side of the tent.

The Condor includes USB-powered LED light strips, which we ran off a small jumpstart battery pack. We like that they're mounted on Velcro and can be easily repositioned. The Condor 2’s zip-open skylight is great for stargazing, and the tent is largely light-tight with all the windows zipped up, a boon for light sleepers.

Related: 11 Overland Truck Camper Shells, Toppers, and Bed Caps That You Can Sleep In

Once bunked down, we appreciate the numerous storage pockets for eyeglasses and other odds and ends. The memory-foam mattress pad is a bit thin; it's likely fine for younger campers but a little rough on aging hips and pelvises. Next time we use the Condor 2, we’ll bring additional padding.

Folding the Condor 2 is no trickier than other rooftop tents we’ve used; it takes practice to get everything tucked in and the tent clamped down, especially if you’re doing it solo. On the plus side, the tent can be folded with sleeping bags in place, a nice space-saver in a pickup truck where lockable storage is in short supply and a time-saver once you’re at the next camping spot. Overall, we found the Condor 2 to be a great camping companion, even if your, uh, neigh-bros leave much to be desired. —Aaron Gold

More on Our Long-Term 2023 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro:  

• You Can't Miss This Toyota
• Back-Breaking First Impressions
• How's Our Tundra's Interior Holding Up?
• Testing the Tundra TRD Pro's Off-Road Chops
• Our Tundra Has 750 Miles of Range*
• Raptor-Sized Regrets
• The Tundra Goes on the Ultimate Road Trip