Your deer barrel should be grooved on the rear sight base for scope mounts, at least the later ones were.
I believe you are correct. Mine was an earlier one so I installed one of the "saddle mounts" on it with a good quality 1.5 X 4 scope. The only thing I didn't like about this gun was shooting it. Thankfully afer the first year I would just fire two check out shots before the season started and one additional shot while actually hunting. I doubt if I fired a whole box of shells in this gun in all the time I owned it.
Jim
