Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Finn Aagaard On The 270 Win...

I dont agree with you. Nothing better than 98 Mauser

Good to see you back up and moving buddy!

He hired the Guide / Outfitter that I worked for.
In B.C. the oufitter hires licenced assistant guides to take Dude hunters out in his prescribed territory.
There were many great experiences but that one soured me a little on Safari Club.
He wad a bully type, took no instruction and the camp was glad to see him depart for his flight back to Texas.
I remember stopping to fuel up in Elko, my friend happened to be there and was truly impressed by the bull as we were dropping it off at the taxidermist on the way to his flight. I filled him in about this later on, and John ( my friend)was a serious , dedicated hunter
This happened a long time ago and at that time I did see quite alot of poor shooting- even at 100 yards, folks. My little old opinion.

Have seen quite a few hunters who can't handle a .375 H&H's recoil, mostly in Africa but also elsewhere. But they often won't admit it--or even realize it. One illuminating hunt was a month-long cull in South Africa, where I hunted with a dozen other guys, who came in two groups of six hunters, each staying two weeks.

Many of them brought both a "light" rifle--chambered for rounds from the .270 Winchester to the .325 Winchester Shot Magnum, and a bigger rifle, chambered for rounds from the .300 Winchester Magnum to the .375 H&H for larger plains game, though two guys also hunted Cape buffalo, and one of them used a .416 Remington Magnum. (His light rifle was a .308 Winchester.)

The majority of them started flinching with their larger rifle, partly because we were shooting a lot of animals, both culls and trophies. One guy brought a 7mm-08 and a .300 Winchester Magnum, and put the .300 aside after a few days--and still managed to take tougher, larger plains game cleanly with the 7mm-08. Another guy brought two rifles in the same pair of chamberings I did, the 7x57 and 9.3x62--and put the 9.3 aside after a few days, after realizing he was flinching.

One guy brought the .325 WSM for plains game, and a .375 H&H for his buffalo. But the 220-grain Power Point factory loads didn't penetrate enough on the larger plains game, and he ended using the .375 on everything--and very well. But have found that sort of shooter relatively rare....

Bunduki eh? I've never thought of a particular rifle as lucky, always seems good or bad results came from the skill of the operator.

41

Good Morniing
You have vast experience worldwide and I respect you knowledge of these things.
My question to you is.... Are client hunters expected to zero their rifles on location where you have hunted?
I found if I observed their handling of the firearm, watched them check their zero and make the neccessary adjustments , it spoke volumes how they might be in the field.
Some brought no tools, to check the bedding , mounting ,machine screws etc. Furthermore, some would of never thought to do this.
One Weatherby guy told me his rifle was zero'd from factory
Muledeer , you must have oodles of these types of stories. Probably enough to write a book.
Happy New Year to you and all.

This isn’t something “client” hunters have the corner on. I suspect a very high percentage of North America’s hunters go afield with a rifle that hasn’t had confirmation of zero for an extended period of time.

Just on Finn Aagaard's article on the .270, it's a good article but I do find it a bit misleading. He starts off saying that Jack O'Connor experienced more big game put down with fewer shots with the 7 x 57 than with anything else. The implication being that though Jack O'Connor touted the .270 in his writings, the 7 x 57 was better at putting down big game with fewer shots than the .270. However, the reason that Jack O'Connor made that statement about the 7 x 57 was simply that in his early days he used the 7 x 57 more than the .270 and also that his wife whom he accompanied on most of her hunts, used the 7 x57 as her big game cartridge. Therefore, he saw more big game being shot at with the 7 x 57 than the .270, and as a consequence, saw more big game put down with the 7 x 57. However, he considered the 7 x 57 as a down-loaded .270 and not quite as good, notwithstanding that in his later years he returned to the 7 x 57 because of the reduced recoil and possibly muzzle blast.

Quibbling over something written decades ago.

The thread is "Finn Aagaard On The 270 Winchester". If it's "quibbling over something written decades ago", then the whole thread is of little relevance also.

AYE !!!

I'll start by saying yep! And yeah, have had guys insist their rifles was zeroed even though they'd never fired it, whether at the factory or the counter-guy at the sporting goods store where they bought it, who'd zeroed it with a bore-sighter.

Yes, all hunters have been required to at least check the zero on their rifles before hunting--and when I guided for a while around 30-35 years ago I insisted on it, partly for the reason you stated: " I found if I observed their handling of the firearm, watched them check their zero and make the neccessary adjustments , it spoke volumes how they might be in the field."

Though I did have to shoot a couple guys' rifles to get the zero close before they check-fired it, as they were obviously over-gunned so started flinching after taking their first shot or two. Many guys were also classically over-gunned.

One was hunting pronghorns and mule deer in the open country of central Montana. He was from somewhere Back East, and apparently believed he needed a more powerful cartridge to take game at "western" distances. So he left his .243 Winchester at home and bought a new 7mm Remington Magnum. (He eventually got his game, but it wouldn't have taken as long with his .243.)

One my Montana outfitter friends, sees the same sort of thing all the time. His pet peeve was guys bringing a .300 magnum of some sort to hunt mule deer, since 3/4 of 'em couldn't shoot a .300 well enough to put the bullet in the right place at even 200 yards, so shooting at 300+ was out of the question. (Finn Aagaard also observed this happening with safari clients who brought .300 magnums, saying only a third could shoot .300s well.)

Oh, and I ran into another guy who couldn't shoot a .300 magnum well on a horseback hunt in northern British Columbia. He was a European who'd hunted Stone sheep the previous year with the same outfitter--then decided to come back and hunt caribou and moose. He'd brought a 7x64 Brenneke for the ram, essentially a metric .280 Remington, and made a 1-shot kill at medium-long range. But he decided it wouldn't work on moose, so bought a .300 Winchester. When we did the 100-yard zero-check in camp, he shot a nice round 18-inch group with his new .300--and took several shots to get his moose dead, and the same thing happened on the caribou.

Most also brought no tools, and I saved some trips by using mine--including some epoxy to fix a cracked wrist on one guy's stock. But they also didn't bring really basic stuff, such as a screwdriver with the correct bits to tighten the screws on their stock or scope mounts.

Have written about all of this in various books and articles....

One problem with your analysis is that Jack himself used the 7x57 more and more as he got older, because like many aging hunters he became more recoil sensitive. O'Connor discussed this in at least one of his books....

Personally I have shot a pile of big game with the 7x57, both in North America and Africa, plenty of it larger than "deer" size, including wildebeest, kudu, elk and moose. Have also shot and seen shot plenty game of the same size-range with .270. Have never been able to see any consistent difference in how either cartridge killed....

I will add to MD post that O’Connor often stated he did not see much difference in killing between 7x57, 270, 30-06, the various 300 and 338 mags on game (including plains game) up to Elk. It was not always this way in his writing

You can clearly see in his writings that in early days he liked to take a 270 for sheep/deer and 30-06 with heavier bullets for Bigger game like bear and Moose. After he killed a bunch of bigger animals with the 270 cause he ran into a caribou, moose or grizzly sheep hunting figured out it worked as good as the 06 on bigger animals and started using it more as preferred the flat trajectory. When the 300 wby, 338 win, 7 rem Mag came out, he used those and did not see much of a difference taking game just more recoil and heavier guns.

For middle period (and most prolific) of career settled on the 270 Win with 130 and 150 Nosers for most hunting especially a lot of international hunts, though still used other stuff. When hunting really big or dangerous game he went to something bigger but that was something bigger than something like an Elk, Kudu, or Zebra where he found the 270 will shoot through and kill fine. So as with the Boddington thread it wasn’t “270 for everything” from the beginning. In using the 270, he found it worked well with good bullet construction despite some early concerns with light bullets

I expect like a lot of older hunters he was less worried with theoretical long range situations and more worried about pracitcal things like recoil as got older and used the 7x57 more

Lou

The quote "...I believe I have seen more big game killed with fewer shots with the 7 x 57 than with any other cartridge" is from J. O'Connor's article "The 7 x 57: Cartridge with Nine Lives". In that same article, he says: "my own experience on big game with the 7mm Mauser is not wildly extensive." He talks about his wife using it in the same paragraph. Although he discusses many others (besides his wife) who used it successfully, it's not clear how many of those instances he actually had "seen". If his experiences with the 7 x 57 included a lot of personal use himself when he got older as part of the reason for the quote "...I believe I have seen more big game killed with fewer shots with the 7 x 57 than with any other cartridge" then that seems to be in conflict with his statement "my own experience on big game with the 7mm Mauser is not wildly extensive".

Damn - you sure get caught micro managing a single tree while missing the entire forest...

Not at all - I accept that both cartridges are very good. However, in Finn Aagaard's article on the .270, he starts off the article with a quote from Jack O'Connor and uses that same quote for justification at the end of the article as to why he adopted a 7mm as opposed to the .270 as his primary preferred cartridge. Now I am simply exploring whether that conclusion is based on a flawed premise. The importance of placing both the premise at the start of the article and the conclusion at the end of the article indicates that they are not insignificant to the whole article or "micro-managing" as you call it. Just to be clear, if, for example, J.OC saw 95 out of 100 big game killed with one shot with a .270, but had seen 180 big game killed out of 200 with one shot with a 7 x 57, then he would have "seen more big game killed with fewer shots with the 7 x 57..." than the .270, yet in the example, the .270 would have a 95% one-shot kill ratio whereas the 7 x 57 would have a 90% one-shot kill ratio.

And yet you’re still lost, exploring and left wondering in said forest.

At least MD addressed the argument with a valid counter argument. Some of the other dummies who have replied aren't capable of doing that - I suppose that's why they are just "followers".

Shoot 'em all, and let God sort 'em out.