Don, i had a mirage on my patriot, it worked well but i have one of the older models and i did not trust it for hunting ( durability) The thing i didn't like was the actuator arm setup. It would be easy to strip and move while shooting. I was using my rest without the spring also, but it does put added stress on the actuator arm. Like GKF tech said check to see if your pad is postiond properly where the cradle drops, if it isn't you will get noise! I put a mini limb saver on the rest also, it seemed to help. Any way i went back to my GKF INFINITY rest for hunting, i trust this rest 100%. Good luck.

Brian