What they are telling you is that if you mess around with that fine rifle, like removing sights and rebluing, you will have cut a huge amount from its present value.
By all means, leave it like it is.
Since you are asking these questions, I take it you are not an experienced rifleman. Virtually every inexperienced hunter/shooter starts out with scopes that are vastly over powered and huge.
Like someone said, get a smaller scope and lower rings. Some mighty fine, old classic hunting scopes were fixed power and the objective lens was the same size as the scope tube. These scopes, mounted as low as possible, with disregard for seeing the front sight in them, acconted for a lot of exotic game, by a great many well heeled shooters in some of the finest game country in North America.
Think Weaver K2.5 and K3, or the king of the crop, the Lyman Alaskan.
The best hunting scopes currently available may be the high quality 1, or 1.5x, to about 4x, or 5x. Anything larger than 2 to 7 power and the once neat, light rifle, starts to get heavy and very awkward to carry and handle.
A lot about Jack O'Connor has recently been written on these threads. Some have stated, without contradiction, that he was about the best rifleman/shooter of them all. He had very little use for variable scopes. He said he got one, but after a period of time, he realized he never changed it from the 4x setting! He also wrote that he thought the 4x was about the best magnification for a hunting scope, and that included all the hunting he did for sheep, and other mountain game.
