While I understand your thinking on the scope, let's focus on reality. Your shooting deer/bear sizes targets at in all reallity, will be under 100 yards and in all probability, under or around 50. A 3-9x40 is overkill. Your not shooting chucks or ground squirrels. If your scope breaks, it's because you dropped your gun, or slammed it on something. Even with a good scope, just bumping it warrants a trip to the range to verify it is still zeroed in. If your dead set on spending your money, buy a really good 1.5 to 5, and when you bump it, it will still be off as much as the cheapy.
It would be a different story if you were hunting Altay Argalai, Dagastan Tur, or Desert Bighorns, where your shots can be over 400 yards, but we're talking whitetails and maybe bears, and in NJ that's an under 100 yard game. Hell, I'd go so far as to say I'd take that same rig to hunt Africa for plains game. With a 2 3/4 slug, I'm lethal to 200 yards, although, hunting here, I don't need to reach out that far. I'm more than confident, that that gun would be more than andequate on a kudu or waterbuck, provided, only, that a broadside shot on a relaxed animal was taken. We give entirely too much credit to whitetails. The game is real simple, put any size chunk of lead into the vitals, results will always yield a dead deer.
