Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Boddington on the .270 Winchester

I notice this too on the hunting shows that promote long range shooting. There are always a crew about with all kinds of stuff and several eyes and a camera watching everything and replaying footage of shot if there is a question. I guess that is one way to hunt but I would try and get closer or at least have a chance without all those people and equipment. That approach doesn’t sell 10-15k “hunting systems” though. I am not even a crumudgeon…

Lou

Quite true Lou. I quit watching shows years ago. All they do is permote their product and big animal, in the end it ruins what hunting is all about.

horse1 nailed it in very few words.

Once your wind correction reaches 2 inches per MPH of breeze you have reached the point of needing to guess the wind inside 2mph. Getting a bit sketchy no matter what you are shooting or how much of a hotshot you think you are. I have used the 270 a lot but have always preferred the 30-06. And I own 3 270 rifles and just one 30-06. I could however if I had to use a 270 for everything.

Followed his writing and travels to hunt for years. Rereading a deer rifle article of his over the last few days. He has shot alot of animals. He has shot alot of animals with factory ammunition , I can't remember ever reading about him working up a reload for a hunt. Like a lot of guys here my use of a load I worked up is part of the satisfaction I get from a successful hunt. I can't even imagine cheating myself out of that. I've shot enough deer to know the 270 works well and know more than a few people who have used it successfully on elk. I enjoy reading and sometimes hearing opinions of others but.make my decisions based on what I think. I'd rather read JB everyday of the week and twice on Sunday because you know he reloads his own ammo...mb

It wasn't too long ago that a 30-06 was recommended as a man's rifle and .270 was recommend as a woman/child's rifle. I never understood that one.

Many are afflicted with irrational notions when it comes to cartridge selection.

Bob,

I know Craig pretty well, and at one point during a conversation years ago somebody else mentioned handloading. Craig laughed and said, "What's that?"

I know he does handload some, but because he traveled so much to hunt for many years he didn't have time to do it much, one reason he used either factory ammo, or handloads somebody else put together.

While I traveled to hunt quite a bit for a number of years, it wasn't nearly as much as Craig--you have to travel a LOT to win the Weatherby Award! In fact, he also did a lot of his writing on long airplane flights.

These days in semi-retirement I don't handload nearly as much, partly because I don't have to, and partly because most of my "hunting" involves Richardson's ground squirrels. Which is why we keep plenty of .17 HMR ammo on hand....

OK, JB just as long as I never hear you say Eileen and I decided to go deer hunting tomorrow so I stopped by Wallyworld showed them my DL picked up 2 boxes of 130 gr high shoks for our 270's.lol..mb
.

Consider that most 6.5mm Creedmoor factory ammo uses fast expanding plastic tipped cup core bullets.

HPBTs like the Scenar or VLD just work better, in my opinion. In both the 6.5 CM and .270 Win.

I have killed couple critter with 140 berger vld in 6.5 cm but not enough to really have an opinion. However my cousin and his family have shot a bunch with 139 scenars in 6.5 cm/prc with outstanding results so think you are probably right.

Lou

i don't like Boddington's (and his ilk,) writing. it seemed to me a manufacturers' commercial so i quit (late '90s) reading them. that is just my opinion. i read Petersons Hunting, Shooting Times, Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield and a couple i can't remember.

Mule Deer aka John Barness did a nice piece on A Hunter's Story. Ted Trueblood, Ed Zern, Gary Sitton, John Wooters, Kieth McCafferty, Gene Hill and others were great storytellers, not a Manufactures' Dream like they are printing now.

https://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/hunting/2010/09/hunters-story/


anyway, i shot many deer with the '06 and the 270 and i couldn't tell the difference. on Nosler's Ballistic Tip or Hornady's SST, the impact speed is like a bullet "mushroom" or expand at 2800+/-fps, but they fragment at 2900+fps. in my case, the deer are close up to the muzzle (from feet to about 60 yards), so my impact speed is around 2800+/-fps, so i handload accordingly. i don't like bloodshot meat, so a fragmented bullet is not necessary. i like a bullet to expand and exit an animal. for the past 11 or 12 years, that is why i use cast bullets.


i have one Arisaka Type 99 in '06 and one Ruger #1 in 270 Winchester. i have had '06 and 270's in Remington, Savage, Mossberg, TC Venture and others. every rifle, expect one, grouped 1" or less at 100 yards (5 shots/bench). the one rifle that didn't group was a new Remington Mountain rifle in '06. the best group i got was around 1 3/4 - 2 1/4" group at 100 yards with factory ammo 180gr Remington RN. i did everything i could do to the rifle. different scopes, different scope mounts, JB paste, different stock.......along with different bullets, powder, primers and brass. i could not group better than the factory ammo. i gave the '06 to my gunsmith (RIP) for a couple of months, he 'glass it, did a new crown and other stuff and he did 1 1/2" group at 1(5 shots/bench) with 180gr Reminton RN ammo. he tried a couple of different powders and he got a 3 - 3 1/2" group at 100 yards. the other powders would do a 4" and up group. the Remmie got sold the next day. i think it was a Savage m116 SS with adjustable muzzle brake in '06.

if it had to one, it would be the 270 Winchester. i would load up some 140gr Hornady SST and IMR4350 at around 2800fps and go deer/black bear hunting.

A .270 is a great round for lots of different game. I have a Ruger Hawkeye stainless laminate in .270 that's one of my favorite and most accurate rifles.

But I prefer the .260 Rem, short action from a .308 parent cartridge. For TX whitetail and hogs, it's perfect. Shooting 120gr Barnes TTSX it minimizes blood shot meat.

Which is one reason why I killed my latest elk, a 500-pound cow on the 15th, with the 127 LRX from my custom Sisk 6.5 PRC. Dropped right there, with minimal meat damage.

Which is also partly why Eileen and I have been using more and more monolithics over the past decade or so....

A buddy of mine that lives down the road from me recently asked if I could help him with an older .270 that his dad gave to him. The rifle had never shot well and he wanted it to be more accurate, plus he wanted a new laminated stock to bring some life back into it. The rifle turned out to be a well-worn 700BDL with a 7lb trigger, a barrel full of copper, and a front sling swivel stud that had all but gouged a hole in the underside of the barrel.

After I scrubbed everything out, swapped in a new 2.5lb trigger, and bedded/floated the action in a new laminate CDL handle from Stockys, he was very happy with how things looked. He picked out a new scope with a BDC reticle that lined up fairly well with typical 130gr .270Win ammo. We were zeroed at 200yds with three shots and I had him sit down and shoot the 200yd hog silhouette, as well as the 300 & 400 yard gongs. He easily made kill shots on everything, mentioning that most of his experience had been inside 200yds. I'd almost forgotten how comfortable a heavier .270Win sporter is to shoot, as it was really pleasant. I told him that while almost no advertisements/articles/or press seems to be pushing the .270Win very much these days, it is still my pick for "King of the Deer Cartridges" for the one-rifle hunter that shoots factory ammo. It's not flashy, but it's damn good at killing deer-sized stuff as far as most hunters have any business shooting.

[quote=JPro]and a front sling swivel stud that had all but gouged a hole in the underside of the barrel.

/quote]
Well said Jpro damn you made me laugh hard with that statement. I have bought atleast a 1/2 doz. used rifles where someone had left the frt sling stud too long and rubbed on the barrel. A simple dollar bill test tells the story. Your dead on with the rest of it too a good shooting 270 is like a good cold beer hard to beat..mb

I hunted with an outfitter in SE Kansas in early December who also said he had more issues with lost deer due to the 6.5 Creed than any other cartridges. I'm not a Creed fan boy but this stance still surprised me. I didn't question him on why but my thoughts were inexperienced, over confident hunters due to hype. I was curious what he thought about smaller bullets so I asked him what he thought about a 257 Weatherby, which I was using. Her said he loved them and used one himself.


Also thought about an often stated fact here on the campfire. Bullets matter, not headstamps.

I will eventually read all 11 pages here; Boddington has written as a young gun writer he could not hitch his wagon to the .270 as he was too close in time to JOC. How fortunate for him to have a David Miller 7mag. He has written often the 7mag is not his favorite but he did what was necessary…

He’s earned his stripes and JOC is unknown by the masses so it is pretty safe to write good things about the 270 Win now.

I grew up reading JOC and Outdoor Life, and came to believe that the 270 was pretty much all anyone needed for hunting in my part of the country. So, I bought a Remington 700 Classic 270 the first year they came out. I killed somewhere around 50-60 deer with it before I started using other rifles. Most were taken with a handload of 60 grains H4831 and a 130 Sierra soft point. I never lost or had to track a deer I shot with that rifle and that load. Even though I've not used that rifle in years, I still consider the 270 and a 130 grain soft point bullet to be the best combo ever made for whitetail deer hunting.

As for those who have said that the 6.5 Creedmoor is a lousy deer cartridge....it is most likely the fact that the man behind the gun is the lousy part of that equation. I have killed about 7 or 8 deer with the 6.5 CM and every one has either dropped in the tracks or within 20 yards. Every load used has been a handload, with one deer each taken the 120 and 140 Nosler BT's and the rest killed with a 120 Sierra Prohunter SP. I have seen hunters using the 6.5 CM with bullets that I don't believe were designed for hunting, and I have wondered about their experiences. Regardless of the cartridge one uses, there are right bullet choices and wrong ones.

Well..... I too remember the article. IIRC, it was at the National Rifle Association facility somewhere in the US South West. I can't remember the name. Whittington Center???? He was hunting with the late Chub Eastman who worked in sales for Nosler Bullets. Boddington placed a Nosler Partition at over four hundred yards. The shot was a very fast one shot elk kill. I remember reading a article written by Chub on the 9.3 calibers. He told of the use of the 9.3 x 64 Brenneke by the president of Norma Ammunition using a two shot over and under bread down rifle. The only rifle he owned....used all over Africa and the world. He had a one kill shot on elk and other game in British Columbia to the best of my memory. Very, very good story on the 9.3 cartridges. I really enjoyed his stories.