Looking at the deluxe Howard hill hunting quiver. My only real intention is to use it for blunts while small game hunting and target shooting. Anyone have experience with them? They seem more reasonably priced than many back quivers and look like they'd fit the bill for what I want. Just want to make sure it'd be a quality piece of equipment
You wont go wrong with one mine is high quality.
Should I get the softer leather version to keep the arrows from rattling? This will be my first back quiver
That depends how you will use it. I've got a soft and hard quiver. The softer I use for hunting and the hard quiver I use for target shooting, small game hunting. It's easier to pull/ put arrows in or out. The softer one is lighter too.
The hard ones get very usable if they are soak with Neats or olive oil. The soft quiver has stitching in the shoulder strap on mine, some stitching deteriorates with certain oils. I do not know if the stitching in the Hill quiver would hold up to oil treatments or not.
I've had mine for a couple years, and love it. I picked up the soft version, and the strap on mine isn't stitched, it's held with leather lacing. Maybe they changed something since?
My strap is attached with leather, but the strap itself is a stitched two piece laminate. It has harder corners than the one piece strap. This spring I rubbed in a bit of Neats glove oil to soften it up a little. So far the stitching is not showing any problems, I'll just replace it if it does.
To answer possums post, hard quivers take time to conform to the user. Once they do they are like a part of you. However, the soft Hill quiver that I have, 22", took no breaking in at all, other than softening the corners of the strap, is very well behaved in the field. I would suggest getting a soft one for your first back quiver. Careful, these back quivers last longer than a pet parrot. You may find a reason to have two if you hunt with more than one set up, but that would be totally unneeded. I have a 27" bop arrows, I prefer 22" for broadheads and 20" for net length target arrows and blunts. I have four two lefties and two righties. Two 20" would do me fine, but I needed an excuse to have more. I do not like the arrows sticking out of the quiver any longer than needed, so I use arrows as short as I can by with.
As aside note, the other night I heard a thump on the back street and my pet possum got run over. Early this morning I heard a noise outside and I have another possum, now I am not sure if the new one is my old pet or the one that got run over. Possums all look alike to me.
I have had mine for over 30 years of continuous use. The only thing I have had to do was replace the lace that holds the strap to the quiver. I bought a back up that was the softer leather about 10 years ago but as was mentioned in a previous post, it is harder to remove and replace arrows with it because of it's softness. It's also heavier because of the oil content. My old one has conformed to my body and muscle memory and is likely not replaceable after all this time.
I have the lighter weight Hill quiver, and a heavier one that that I made.
The Hill conformed to my back quickly. It is quite a bit lighter than mine, but it is harder to get the arrows back in it when practicing. (http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii185/finnish-archer/ArcheryPhotos/20150716_071154_zpsk6nppmnv.jpg) (http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii185/finnish-archer/ArcheryPhotos/20150716_071215_zpsfmzbcpk6.jpg)