Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Finn Aagaard on the 280 Remington

Yeah, and Finn's experience with the .270 (as he stated in that article) wasn't with shooting a few deer, as it is with most people, but watching various .270's in use while performing his duties as a PH in Africa. In fact, he never even owned a .270 until he moved to the U.S.!

My own experience with the .270 was somewhat different. Bought my first at age 20 and hunted with it for years, with great results. In fact it was among the most accurate big game rifles I've ever owned, averaging around an inch or a little more at 300 yards for 3-shot groups of its favorite handload. Within the next 10 years I tried several other rounds, due to rifle loonyism (plus shooting out the barrel on that .270), but my wife started hunting with a .270 soon after we got married. She also had great "luck," at one point taking a dozen big-game animals in a row with one shot each, ranging from pronghorns at over 400 yards to elk and a bull moose. And the moose is still the "quickest deadest" bull I've seen taken with any cartridge.

I was young and relatively inexperienced and thought such accuracy and killing power must be "normal," but after more rifle loonyism realized the .270 was damn good. It may indeed be due to what you just mentioned, a perfect match of cartridge and bullets. I dunno, but like the .308 and some other cartridges (the .243 and 9.3x62 come to mind) the .270 flat works.

I don't think it's magic, because the .280 and .280 AI work just as well in my experience--and I used the .280 a LOT during the 90's, as part of my rifle loonyism, and the .280 AI some since then. And there's somewhat of a lack of real long-range .270 bullets, though that's changing. But the .270 certainly does a good job on big game, for whatever reasons.