I travel to hunt a lot, mostly by car. When that happens stuff gets piled up deep into the back of my SUV and off we go. I have on rare occasions flown with my sporting equipment but that’s rare for me. For this, I wanted a take down bow that could be put into a hard case for protection that had everything needed for a hunt in one well organized, well protected, convenient to travel package. Because I do occasionally fly, I wanted the case to also be TSA compliant so that it could also hold my broadheads, hunting knife, and a handgun as desired since those items would need checked with TSA anyway. Again, the goal is one case to hold everything needed for a hunt.
When selecting a case my goal was to get the case that had the physically smallest exterior dimensions capable of holding everything that I needed for a hunt. I was not very concerned about one brand vs another, though I did want solid foam because cut foam is better than pluck and pull, but I was willing to purchase solid foam separately if needed just to get the smallest case that would possibly work for my setup. Convenience is my priority here. The longest item in my kit was my quiver with broadhead tipped arrows in it. If I took the arrows out of my quiver I could have gotten a case with an external length about 1” shorter but for 1” of bulk, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze of having to unload my quiver and take broadheads off every time. This dimension landed me at the Pelican Storm IM3100. It’s well made, TSA compliant, waterproof for when hunting from a canoe, and fit the bill.
From here I took butcher paper and cut out rectangles sized to the interior dimensions. I laid out all of my gear and traced on the butcher paper as needed until I found a layout that worked for my specific gear list. Once that was done I carefully cut out my tracings with an X-Acto knife so that I could transfer the layout pattern to the foam. I flipped the template over to trace the inverse of the pattern, pinned it into place with some staples, and used a silver sharpie marker to mark my cut lines for all of my equipment. After cutting out slots for all of my equipment with my small filet knife some of the sharpie marks remained which isn’t a problem because all I had to do was flip the foam in the case and it revealed the clean backside of the foam and turned that inverse template tracing back to how I originally drew it out. Some cuts remained full depth but for the items too narrow you can use the cutouts to slice off thickness pads to hold the items higher in the case. If you notice there is no foam left on the end of the quiver or nocks in the bottom of the case. This was a tight fit but it doesn't rattle around or bang up and break my nocks because the take down straps/mounts on my quiver are poked into cutouts in the middle later of foam keeping all of that from shifting during transport.
The lid had corrugated foam in it so I used the quiver/arrows blocks cutouts to make the crossbars for the lid to hold my arrows. I used a 3’ level for a straight edge and a box cutter to get a partial depth cut though the foam while it was still mounted in the lid. I did 12 skewed cuts to hold a dozen spare arrows and put an extra cut on one side for a bow square.
With one grab and go option I can instantly spot for missing items and load up everything needed for any hunt. I really like the convenience and organization that it provides for hunts, especially when traveling and coming back home for a forgotten essential is inconvenient. Also it's completely waterproof and floats for when going into places by boat, is TSA compliant when flying, and I can pile all sorts of stuff on top/around it when traveling by car. The last trip I took we put this on the bottom of the cargo area and a few other things around it then laid the dog bed on top so our Border collie could nap on the drive. It's set up to hold:
- bow
- quiver with 4 arrows
- 12 spare arrows with different heads for other species on multi-species hunts
- two spare strings, pre-stretched and pre-tuned for backup
- bow square for just if needed
- binoculars
- knife
- game calls under arm guard
- two shooting gloves under arm guard
- arm guard
- .44 Mag if needed as a backup/sidearm if going into a place with some dangerous game - These cutouts are in the middle layer of foam under the quiver section but I keep them plugged most of the time
I've fielded a bunch of questions on this setup over the years. Hopefully this post helps explain what I did but more importantly
why I chose what I did so you can do a similar concept build if desired.
Topic: Take Down Bow Case (Read 755 times)
