Caliber Quest and the .270 Winchester?

[roysclockgun]

Sorting some cartridge cases around my gun room, I noticed that I have a couple hundred .270 Win. cases. I no longer own a rifle chambered in .270 Win. Seeing those cases made me wonder why I have, over the years, gone from one caliber to the next and one rifle to the next.
My only answer is that the quest stirs the blood and makes some of us motivated on into our golden years, while many of our peer group have retired to the recliner, in front of the TV!
The .270 Win. is a superb cartridge. I have owned four rifles in that caliber, all bought used, or built from old Mauser actions. All got the job done in fine style, if I did my part. No animal that I hit with the 130gr. .277 bullet got away. Yet, I left that caliber in my wake and moved on. Why, I can't say, except that again, I was on a quest.

When I had a chance to hunt elk, I decided that I had to have a .30 cal., so I got my Dad's Win. Mod. 70 in 30-06, and killed my first and only bull elk with that. I decided that the pre-64 Win. Mod. 70 was "the rifle", so I bought Dad's Model 70 in .270Win., made in 1952. That rifle accounted for a number of deer, until through reading, I decided that the 7mm bullet flies better than the .270cal., or the .30cal. bullet and up to 175gr., is superior to the .30cal. bullet. So, I bought a rifle in 7mmRemMag and took it west to conquer mule deer and pronghorn. Without a doubt, the 7mmRemMag did the job.

Once more, I decided to go after bull elk and from reading too many gun rags, I had to have a rifle in 300RUM. That was the worst cartridge that I ever attempted to hand load for. It was finicky and would print excellent groups until I pushed the MV beyond what I could get from my 30-06! So, why waste time and propellent and I sold the 300RUM. In fact, I sold all those rifles, when I was convinced that the next one would be *IT*!

Going for retro-design, I bought a used Browning B78 in 7mmRemMag. I stuck with that rifle for six years, which was at that time, my record for using any rifle. The B78 was a beautiful rifle and shot better than it looked. I was happy............until, in a trade, I acquired a Browning Stalker in .280Rem. with BOSS. I did not use the muzzle brake, but only the BOSS attachment with no brake. Now, I had a rifle that handles and shoots very much like my beloved .270 rifles, but better.

So, dear reader, the Browning in .280Rem. will likely be in my hands when I go on to my heavenly reward...................but wait!! I just bought my wife a rifle in 7mm-08! This thing is SWEET!
Steven in DeLand

 

[SJB358]

Steven, that is pretty cool. Really hard to pit the 270 Win against the 280. Both are very classic, high performance rounds. I have never owned a 270 Win, but I have had my 270WSM since 2004. I love that rifle and cartridge to pieces. Part of it is the chambering and the other is the M70 portion of it. I just plain shoots everything I put down its throat with ease. I am not likely to ever be without the rifle.

I also have the EXACT twin to my 270WSM, only in the 7WSM... Yeah, both perform so close to one another it is crazy to have both, but again, I love the rifle alot and they are both incredible shooters. Scotty

 

[6mm Remington]

Yep Scotty looks like another one of us has the sickness also! It has RADD written all over it!

 

[DrMike]

Steven,

Funnily enough, I've never owned a 270 Win. I purchased a 280 Remington early on in my rifle madness, and I've now owned three. I can't imagine that I'll ever be without a 280 Remington. Really, it adds little to the 270, except I can brag about the better bullet selection it permits. This addition is fun, however.

 

[Oldtrader3]

DrMike, I am the opposite, the first rifle that I bought myself was a 7mm Rem Mag but the next two were a Mannlicher in .270 and a Ruger #1 (.308 Win). The current custom stocked 270 Win, Model 70, Pre-64, which I still have, came a little while later in 1973.

I suspect that the 160 Partition from the 7mm Mag kills deer a little quicker than the 130 Partiton from the .270 but I honestly can't prove it. All deer killed with both are down so fast that I cant see a difference even though I know intellectually it is there.

Evrybody hereabouts and nowadays likes to knock the .270 Winchester but mine still kills deer as well as it ever did and the rifle is still as nice as it ever was.

 

[DrMike]

I can't imagine anyone who has witnessed the 270 in the field would knock it as a deer cartridge. We rifle cranks really do live in a great era, with the multiplicity of cartridges and rifles available today.

 

[roysclockgun]

Even Jack O'Connor, near the end of his writing days, admitted that the 280Rem nudges out the 270Win. He said that if he had no hunting rifle, he'd buy a rifle in 280Rem, but for someone who already had a 270Win, the 280Rem would not do enough, in terms of an improvement, to warrant the change.

I believe that is true for clearly 3/4 of the calibers that we call deer calibers. If you are doing well with any of them, there really is no sane reason to switch to another.
Now, if you are a gun nut, then who cares whether accumulating more rifles is sane or not?

I am not convinced that the more recent penchant for huge magnum cartridges provides much of an improvement, in terms of how effective a hunting rifle is for any hunter. I have been told that the extended effective range prompts people to buy and use magnums, like the 30-378. But then if one cannot get close enough to kill game with a 30-06, maybe they need to sharpen their field craft and forget about a magnum.
Steven

 

[HTDUCK]

I've never owned a 270 nor am I likely to.
I have 2 280s locked in the safe though and sold another one several years back.

I do have 4 pards that shoot 270s and have no qualms about a 270 as a deer gun.

I load the ammo for two of the four guys and am about to start load development for the third rifle.

Subsequently I have 270 dies, brass and bullets sitting on the shelf.......

RADD????

Could it also be Reloading Attn Defecit Disorder?????

 

[Guy Miner]

The .270 is a great, classic hunting cartridge. Absolutely. I don't have one, but I've got it bracketed! A .25 on one side, a couple of .30's on the other... :grin:

Might want to look at "Obsessions of a Rifle Loony" by John Barsness. Good read, and goes a long way to explaining why us rifle cranks keep playing with different rifles, cartridges, bullets etc... mmmm, mostly because we can't help ourselves!

I started with Dad's .30-06, went small with the 6mm Rem, went bigger to the .300 Win mag, discovered the wonderful .308 Win, fell hard for the 7mm Rem mag, went nuts for the .25-06, and have somehow wandered back to the .308 & .30-06... Oh, and there were .30-30's, a couple of .45/70's, the .300 RUM, and a .375 in the mix too. Bought a .300 WSM, sold it. Bought the same rifle back. Why? I dunno... Hunted with nothing but a muzzle loader for a few years too. Could have just hunted everything with Dad's old .30-06 all along. Sheesh.

Yeah, I still have dies, components and even some loaded ammo for pretty much every rifle cartridge I've ever tried.

Rifle Loonyism. That's it.

Guy

 

[Kodiak]

Over the past 60 some years, I have gone thru a few really nice rifles :roll: . In the early '50s it all started with a Mauser-actioned .257 Roberts. Traded it for a J.C. Higgins bolt-gun in .270Win.
And the race was then in full swing. From that day on, most of what I got, stayed. Some I couldn't wait to get, you know the feeling. Then after a few shots, it left. Got onto levers for a couple of years. Let me say something about levers...the 71 Winchester in .348 is "where it's at", OK? Elk, bears, deer all fell to the crushing blow of the 348's 250 gr. Silvertip bullet. I still have that rifle and several boxes of factory loaded 250STs.

Two-seventys? sure, several came and went as did the .280s and other 7MMs. Then the 30s began cluttering-up the den walls.Thirty-aout-sixes, pre-64s mostly. Collected them for a few years, nice rifles. Then I found a Winchester in .338WM. Oh oh! Soon there were 2, then a couple of Wby. .340s. Probally my best long-range big-game rifle. Out of pure fear, I once shot a Griz at about 15 yards while elk hunting in deep snow. Somehow the 250 gr. Nosler Partition found its way into his left eye-socket, as I fired from the hip :roll: .

Not to drag-on .... so we as hunters and gun-nuts are destined to do what we do, buy, trade, sell and sometimes even give-away rifles .... rifles that somewhere along the way, we just had to own .

God bless us gun nuts,

 

[JD338]

The 280 Rem is truly an under rated cartridge. When loaded to equal pressures of the 270 Win, it will out perform it .The bullet offerings from 120 gr to 175 gr enable the 280 Rem to handle everything from mice to moose.

JD338

 

[Guy Miner]

"and sometimes even give-away rifles"

A friend of mine, Jim, gave away his treasured big bore Marlin, not long before he died unexpectedly at 60. I wonder if Jim somehow knew the end was coming? He looked hale and hearty to me the last time we fished together and the last time we shot together. He thoroughly enjoyed shooting my .375 H&H and was studying up on how to take a 400 yard shot at a bear with his .338-06 Win 70. He'd found a spring where the bear came regularly, and could only see it from a ridgeline across the canyon, 400 yards away.

I still wonder if he gave that Marlin away deliberately, knowing the end was coming.

Guy

 

[Oldtrader3]

I have given away some stuff lately as well, but I kept the .270 and 7mm Rem Mag (2 nicest) rifles which I have. This probably means that I am not dying, yet.

After 20 years of using both, I still cannot cannot tell the difference (shooting deer) with a 130, .270 vs 140, .284 bullet, no one can. It is not until heavier bullets that the difference becomes apparent.

 

[BK]

I really, seriously, don't like the .270. I don't know why, but I have always like the .30-06 better. I like the .280, don't have warm feelings for the 7mm RM. so, naturally, I have three .270s, two 7mm RMs, and only fairly recently picked my first, and then second Springfield. And still don't own a .280.

 

[roysclockgun]

Perhaps our bent toward certain caliber rifles comes from our beginnings. I was a Cub Scout when my Dad put me in front of a groundhog with my "cat and rat" .22cal. rifle. At 12, I graduated to a .22Hornet and not long after that, to a 220Swift.

Deer were still scarce in the eastern parts of Maryland, having been shot out by market hunters. The herds were started up again in the 1930s, by bringing in pairs of white tails and releasing them. In my teens I had still not seen deer in N. Baltimore County, where I lived. I killed my first buck in W. Maryland in what passes for mountains.

So, since I was a groundhog shooter, I gravitated toward calibers that were very accurate on small targets. I never lost that need to make small groups with any rifle that I acquire, no matter what the game. I suppose that many here are the same way. If we can't get it to shoot small groups, it goes.
Steven

 

[CatskillCrawler]

I've never found the need to physically replace a rifle with another or trade for another. The thought of selling a gun has never entered my mind. Probably because I don't own that many and didn't start this "accumulation phase" , as my wife calls it..., until the past ten years.

The .270Win was my first centerfire rifle and it still serves me well even though I've acquired a 30-06, 7-08, 257Rob, 22-250, 222Rem, 358W and .32Spcl. The only rifle that doesn't get carried in the woods by me or my family is the 30-06 and by no fault of its own. It shoots great and is always ready for back-up duty. It was going to be a donor action but I made "that" mistake and it still remains a 30-06.

I guess as one goes through the list of viable cartridges you either find own that you recognize as the Holy Grail of deer cartridges or you realize they all work just fine and you learn to appreciate their subtle differences.

 

[Woodycreek]

My first centerfire rifle was a Rem 700 270 Win. It still shoots 130-140s great and kills deer just fine. But it is plain and has no whiz bang new caliber appeal. That's just me and nothing wrong with the great 270.

 

[PJGunner]

"And still don't own a .280."

Now that could be a serious lack of judgement. :wink: :lol:

Seriously though. I recently built up a .280 Rem. on a 1909 Argentine mauser as so far it has proved to be very accurate. can't wait to take it out and slay something with it.
On the .270, O got my ffirst one in 1973, a commecial FN Mauser that has a stock so ugly it would abort a lady crocodile. (I stole that line from the late Jack O'Connor. ) I shot a deer with it hat year using 130 gr. Silvertips IIRC and what a mess it made. The followint year I used reloads with the 130 gr. Nosler partitions abd blew a coyote in two and mangled another fine piece of eating meat. This soured me on the .270 until a friend suggested going with 150 gr. bullets as he did. I loaded some up and they were very accurate but for some reason something else went hunting rather than that .270. In the meantime, I picked up a Ruger #1 to add to my collection and it was a .270, another .270 commercial FN Mauser came my way anf finally a Winchester M70 XTR push feed somehow got added to the pile. :shock: The Mausers and Winchester are extremely accurate and the Ruger is satisfactory but no barn burner.
In 2009, I finally went on my first guided hunt, going for antelope. After 33 years of not drawing a tag for one here in Arizona, I said to my wife I'm gonna due a land owner hunt in New Mexico and booked with Kiowa Hunting Services. (Sorry. Shameless plug.) I took two rifle, my Winchester M70 XTR and a Winchester M70 Featherweight in 7x57 Mauser. The Mauser was loaded with the 140 gr. ballistic Tip and the .270 with the Sierra 150 gr. Game King.
Never having hunted antelope before, and as it seems everything you read says long range shooting is the name of the game, I took the .270 out on opening day. Within less than half an hour of legal light, I was doing a stalk one a very decent animal and after the roughly half mile sneak, the shot was taken at about 75 yards according to the guide. At that distance I could have used my 30-30 with a cast bullet and taken my "goat".
I was afraid that the .270 at that close a range would damage a lot of meat but the bullet hit near the back of he rib cage and exited just hehind the right shoulder and meat damage was minimal. I sure can't complain at that performance. Maybe I should use that .270 more often. :lol:
FWIW, my load is a max load using Winchester magnum Rifle powder (WMR) which sadly was discontinued about 10 years ago. With Winchester brass and standard primer, the 150 gr. Game King does an honest 2930 FPS from the 24" barrel of that Winchester. All my .270's have 24" barrels except the Ruger #1A which has a 22" barrel.
Paul B.

 

[DrMike]

Great write-up, Paul. Undoubtedly, the 270 is a great rifle. There are precious few cartridges available today that won't do precisely what they are designed to do--kill appropriately sized game quickly and efficiently, provided we do our part and place the bullet where it needs to be. Have you taken anything with your 7 x 57? My Featherweight 7 X 57 was the only rifle I was never able to make shoot tight groups. The best I could get was about 2.5 inches. Rather than cut a thread, I traded it off. I wonder if I didn't make a mistake as I've not replaced it yet.

 

[BK]

"And still don't own a .280."

Now that could be a serious lack of judgement. :wink: :lol:

Trust me, it's not from lack of trying! I've been looking for an original BDL style Mounain Rifle for what seems like forever, and I have two McMillan stocks waiting for the stainless version barreled action (a KS and an RMR, both EDGE fill), been looking for an XCR II in .280 for another McMillan I have (Classic in a purple McSwirley), and I'd love to find a Ruger #1B in .280. I've nearly pulled the trigger on one of the new Kimber 84L in .280AI, and I've thought about ordering one of the Nosler rifles in .280AI.