Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Lee J. Hoots claims .270Win not an adequate mule deer round !

I don't think that's what he meant.

If true, however, they certainly are welcome to the knowledge gained by lurking. Some need it worse than others. I learn frequently and I'm not ashamed to admit I don't know it all.

That's an interesting concept, about gun writers having more experience. Without getting into how one should draw conclusions from one's experiences, I just asked my son, who has killed exactly two mule deer with a 270, what he thought about this(Hoots') opinion. He said it was stupid.

I might analize why someone draws different conclusions than I do based on their experience, but I seldom just "accept it." Especially when they are so blatantly wrong.

This is a very funny thread....I just read the part about the 270's ballistics being "easily bested".....well hell,so is the 300WSM's...by a 338Lapua launching 300 match bullets.The dryly illogical conclusion is the 338 Lapua is the better mule deer cartridge....right?

This is the problem with crunching numbers to establish the worthiness of a cartridge,instead of shooting game with it...the "crunched"(distorted)numbers do not tell us the mule deer is quite as dead hit(properly) by the 270 as he is by the 300 (or maybe not?)and why any one with any experience actually shooting mule deer beyond 200 yards with a 270 will laugh his ass off at such nonsense.

I wrote an article about cartridges for big deer some years ago, I believe in RIFLE, and my conclusion then was that the peak of deer-killing power is somewhere around the 7mm-08 or 7x57, using a 140 grain bullets 280-2900 fps or so--which obviously would include the .270.

I have killed quite a few deer with larger cartridges, including the .30-06, several different .300 magnums and even the .338 Winchester Magnum and 9.3x62. I have also shot a lot of "deer-sized" animals in Africa with the .375 H&H. None of them killed any quicker, on average, than a 140-grain 7mm bullet at 2900 or so (and, again, a .270 bullet actually measures just about a "true" 7mm in diameter). And of course a faster 7mm cartridge would extend the distance a little, but my experience is that almost all deer are killed at under 350 yards, even big mule deer. And out to 350, a 140 started at 2900 does the job quite well.

But that is just my opinion.

The good thing about opinions is anyone can have one.

The bad part about it is we're human so we take things off the table when we're not comfortable with it. Problem is if your position is to "LEAD" (aka provide logic and reason to other) you can get in a hell of a mess fast.

never ever buy stock on a tip!

JB:Maybe your opinion...but it is, as usual,a good one. Agreed!

My copy of the magazine arrived yesterday, so I finally read the article. After reading it, I think the bulk of comments on this thread have been kind and forbearing, some extremely so. That is, without question, one of the shallowest, murkiest and out and out dumbest articles I've ever read. FWIW, I have killed mule deer with rifles chambered in .250 Savage, .257 Roberts, .260 Remington, .280 Remington, .30-'06, .338 Federal, and .35 Remington. Plus my 58 cal muzzleloader. Between family, friends and guided hunters, I have also seen mule deer taken with .243, .25-06, .270, 7x57, 7mm mags of several varieties, .300 mags of several varieties, including .300 WSM, and several other cartridges I can't bring to mind right now, along with the ones I've used.

I have killed several dozen mule deer and have seen several dozen more killed over the years. In addition, I have killed whitetails every bit the equivalent of "big Rocky Mountain" mule deer, and at least one easily bigger. I have, over the 30+ years I have been killing mule deer, reached absolutely the same conclusion My Other Brother Darrell has reached -- a 130-150 gr bullet launched between 2700-3000 fps is as perfect a mule deer prescription as has ever been handed down. I have killed the majority of my mule deer and whitetails with a .280, which has no realistic (though in my heart many imagined ) advantages over the .270.

Oddly enough, though, Hoots's queerly constructed and largely absurd article has more meat and content than Stan Trzoniec's article on .25 caliber rifles, which purported to tell us that "Quarter bores have plenty to offer!" yet failed to offer a single handload, and only discussed three cartridges -- .257 Roberts, .25-06, and .257 Wby Mag. No discussion of wildcats, nor of the first on the market -- .250-3000. His entire article read like a catalog of three new rifles, and provided no more insight than could be gained from picking up a fistful of literature at an outdoor exposition.

About the best article in the magazine was John Haviland's story on the .338 Winchester Magnum. It was interesting and well written -- and I don't even want the .338 Win Mag, nor any other belted magnum!

My final comment...Scovill is clearly responsible, as editor, for everything that appears in Rifle, so I lay the blame squarely on him. And his column on "Brass" clearly shows that he is incapable of pursuing a coherent train of thought from one end of his column to the other -- let alone assemble an entire magazine that makes sense and has some reasonable thread of construction.

The saddest part of it all is that this magazine is still more interesting than anything else on the newstand .

Dennis

I have never found MD's opinion without logical and often real experimental data to support it.

Wish there were more guy's like him writting.

I like eggs.

Have another drink, and go back to bed.

Dennis

Hoping for another pic of your 300 pound hog.

Mmmm ham and eggs sounds good.

This has been a very interesting thread, to be sure. Hoots makes a moronic statement and Towsley throws us under the bus. Just wondering if we have reached "ballistic analysis overload"?Or, "bo" for short.

That is, indeed, what he wrote, and what that means!

[quote=UMT]
Has it ever occurred to any of you insulting keyboard wizards why so few legitimate, working, gun writers refuse to participate on your forum? You have managed to insult half the working writers in this thread alone.

Bryce M. Towsley
[/quotte

Fortunatley, i come here to gain real world experience by guys who have been there and done that. Im not interested in corporate schills who usually promote some product or another for their own personal gain.

I have found out that a lot of gun writers have extremely thin skin and huge ego's. The two stand up guys are JB and PS they weather the storm and are better for it.

You make some good points, Bob.
Especially about the number crunching.
You can fiddle with numbers until you can't see the forest from the trees, which is what I think happend to Hoots in this instance.
JMO.

"Numbers" are what you use to prove things when you can't argue logic with rationality...

Or when you have an unprovable premise you want to convince others of...

Or when you don't know the difference...

Dennis

Perhaps the ideal mule deer round would be a .29 caliber...great compromise tween the .277 and .308 calibers...but what would we call it? I seem to recall an article....

I like eggs? Hmmm, sounds like something Billy Cyrstal blurted in a comedy thing. It is Sunday afternoon, maybe I will have a drink. See ya. .270's rule!

Wasn't that a proposal by JB (mule deer) named "B-29" (or something like that)?