Well, I have no experience with hunting related refurb items, but I wouldn't hesitate to buy a manufacturer refurb from a company that makes high quality stuff.

I work in I.T. and see many electronic refurb items coming to the office. A lot of times the refurbs outlast and outperform the stuff that was purchased new.

My take on this:

New: There are a batch of xxx amount of items coming off the assembly line. a few are tested for quality control. There may be some untested items that will end up DOA or have problems.
Refurb: Each refurbished item is rebuilt to factory specs and tested individually to make sure it works.

Now, I don't work in the manufacturing industry, so I may be wrong about the above, and each company probably handles things differently, but this is how it has been described to me, and it seems to be accurate, because I see the end results first hand.