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

That's the reason I chose it.

There is no practical difference between the 270 and the 280.

Any difference only exists in the mind of the shooter. I think Aagaard knew that.

Yes but admit it, you are just easy.

Bob,

Finn also wrote that he believed "I have experienced a higher proportion of instant, one-shot kills with the .270 Winchester than with any other cartridge."

John: YUP!

And Finn had a lot of experience with the 7x64 so it's not like he was "guessing".

Not to hijack too bad, what are a couple of good Aagaard books to search for?

bigwhop I don't know the books but have read many articles Finn did for American Rifleman and other magazines .

He did some great ones.

I grew up on his stuff. Loved his articles on the 270 Winchester and elk hunting cartridges.

Yes a have a few from those magazines too. Maybe I'm looking for a collection of works as I see can be bought from Amazon.

Aagaard's Africa. It's his memories on growing up in Africa IIRC.

Finn Aagaard on Hunting Rifles & Cartridges. This one is his articles published in the NRA publications.

It's a solid reason.

Aagaard was one of the few gun writers I went out of my way to read. He wrote a lot of great articles for AR. Always enjoyed his straight forward, matter of fact, style.

Long live the 280.

It has always intrigued me how cartridges come along like the 270 & the 308 that just seem to be the perfect marriage of components.

Good. I'll have one for sale shortly. NIB Win M70 if anyone is wondering.

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.

The two quickest kills I have on deer are with the .270 and .280. Both dropped stone dead and didn't even twitch. The small buck I shot with the .270 simply flipped over dead. He was was on his back with all 4 legs in the air, bent and the knees. Shot was about 40 yds.

The .280 kill was on a doe in a clear-cut, about 100 yds. She simply dropped at the shot. Never twitched. Just dead.

MD, what was your bullet (or bullets) of choice when you were shooting the 270 Winchester a lot?

Gee, you want a list? My original .270, a Rem. 700 ADL, shot best with 150-grain Hornady Spire Points and I killed a lot of game with them, but also used the 130 Sierra GameKing and, eventually 130 Nosler Partitions.

When Eileen started using a .270 exclusively, after a couple of years of using my grandmother's old .257 Roberts, it was an early Browning A-Bolt. I worked up two loads that shot to the same place, one with 130 Hornady Spire Points and one with 150 Partitions. She used the Hornadys for sight-in and deer-sized game, and the Partitions on elk and moose.

Eventually, however, she got an Ultra Light Arms .270 because it was so much lighter than the A-Bolt (which only weighed 7-1/2 with a 4x scope. She used 130 Partitions for everything for several years, but switched to the 140 Barnes TSX when it came out, partly just to see how it did, and used it on everything, including elk and caribou, until she started getting recoil headaches and replaced it with a NULA .257 Roberts.

The Hornadys work great, but my all-time favorite .270 bullet is probably the 150 Partition, because I've seen it not only put down deer-sized game quickly but larger stuff from elk and moose to African plains game, including supposedly really tough animals like gemsbok. Which is why my "new" .270 (an O'Connor Commemorative Model 70 purchased a couple years ago) is right now being loaded exclusively with 150 Partitions and RL-26--though I'm also still working on a load to shoot to the same place with a cheaper bullet. Have plenty of 150 Sierra GameKings and Hornady Interlocks, and either would be fine.

Oh, and somewhere in there we've also used some Nosler Solid Bases, Speer Grand Slams, Combined Technology Fail Safes and some other bullets I've probably forgotten about. They all worked too.

Be interested to see what you settle on with the 150 Partition. I am just starting to load them for my .270. Why, I don't know, as the 130 Partition has been good for one-shot kills on everything I have shot with it.