Yeah the most likely reason they shot it down at all was to be able to examine the hardware and/or get an idea of how good the data they were collecting was which would mean they would want it to stay as intact as possible. I also heard in another report that they were strategic about where they shot it down beyond just waiting for it to be above water so it wouldn't hurt anyone. The area it came down the depth of the water is somewhere in the mid 40 foot range, which means they shot it down so that it would land relatively close to the shore. Had they waited much longer to when it was well away from shore then the depth of the ocean drops to more like 600-700 feet which would have made salvaging it much more difficult especially since they didn't have the benefit of some kind of pinging device like they would with the black box of a downed airplane for example.
The reason i say the most likely reason they shot it down was to recover it is because this is like the 5th one of these types of balloons in the past 4-5 years (at least 2 during the Trump administration) and yet they made no effort to shoot the others down. Of course some speculate that the reason they shot this one down was because it got so much coverage by the media making it something the public was pretty well aware of, the other ones didn't get this kind of coverage and so the public was much less aware of the others.
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look! it's a squirrel! 
