Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 270 Winchester versus 280 Remington

Yeah, John.

It fits your by line like a glove...

DF

Ingwe could tell by feel, which one was a "gay" .270...

DF

Yeah....besides, this is really important stuff!

Of course it is!

I'm glad the "gunwriters" of this forum have so diligently addressed this concern of the OP's. Now i think I can sleep better at night knowing you guys have this thing whipped

Nice thread summary, bsa...

DF

When I add up the number of properties and the number of years I killed feral goats, it numbers into the thousands of animals.

Over that period of years I used most everything from the .222 Remington to the .460 Weatherby with again, just about all the bullets available at that time.

When you kill a few dozen animals in a few days using 2 or 6 rifles at a time, you do start to be able to generate "averages" of response to a like hit.

When you consider the general range of cartridges that most people use on deer sized animals, shooting a few a year tends to blend the results so they are much of a muchness. Comparing these 2 cartridges falls into that squarely and I don't believe anyone can detect any real difference unless you start to look at the bullets used and that and only that aspect or component would generate any "perceived" variation between the 2 rounds.

Goats are funny animals. They are often seen by non shooters as the little 40-60 pound cute things kids feed at zoo's and if they are born and grow in arid mountainous or hilly country, can top 200 pounds on the hoof and have a skin thickness that can measure a full 1/4" around the shoulders with both long coarse hair and even an undercoat of mixed angora wool.

You can blow their guts all over the paddock and they still try and get away and yet they can be stupid and stick their head into a bush with their whole body visible and they think if they can't see you, you can't see them. (Wombats do that too)

They are criminal sexual mongrels without romance or etiquette, and commonly gang rape and gloat, bleat and fight for a turn. They stomp on the heads of their lady friends during the act. They are not my kind of critter, but they make great bullet testing medium.

Back to bullets:

When killing these pests, I commonly used small bore magnums like the .240, .257, 270 Weatherby's and the 7mm Remington and also the rounds around them such as the .270, 7x57, .30/06, .243, 6.5 x 55, .25/06 and any others I have forgotten.

Some cartridges stood out.

The .257 Weatherby killed better (meaning a higher percentage of instant kills) than the .270 unless..........I loaded 110gn bullets in the .270. (110gn Speer was a favourite)

Likewise, when Barnes introduced a 100gn X bullet about 20 years back, that bullet was a dynamite in the .270 Winchester. When the 130's and 150 grainers were loaded, the performance fell off.

When I got a pair of test rifles in .270 and .30/06 to try out, I used all the factory ammo provided and also my hand-loads, often with considerably more velocity, and I learned a lot.

The .270 was the .270 and was an average performer, reliable but not at startling as the .257 Weatherby. The .30/06 really surprised me. The bullets as you would realize are or were, all really made for this cartridge in this caliber which is why the .30 magnums struggled when first introduced.

This means they are all designed to expand at the velocity ranges where the .30/06 may have impact, usually from 50 yards to say about 250 yards in most cases. My observation was that the .30/06 was a far greater performer than the .270 as slow factory loads up to 300fps behind my best hand-loads still worked well. The bullets performed as if the range was between the aforementioned span. I put this down to a little more caliber and a reliable and uniform expansion from all the bullets tested.

The .270 Weatherby was better than the 7mm Remington and just as good as the .257 Weatherby when loaded with standard bullets designed for the standard .270 Winchester. The 7x57 was better than the 7mm Remington, again because of the bullets selected for each.

When loaded with something like the 150 or 160gn Partitions, the .270 Weatherby was capable of much more than deer sized game. We had a writer in the 70's called Dick Eusson who was always on the front cover because he routinely shot buffalo with his .270 Weatherby and Partitions. He did it so often it would be stupid to say the .270 was inadequate and Dick was obviously a good hunter and his shots were always shoulder/lung shots, I am not talking head shots here.

So after babbling here on all this stuff, my answer to the OP's questions is, any answer would be meaningless unless you stated which bullets were being loaded and what game was being hunted.

That's how I see it.
John

Aussie GW -

THNX for the post. Very interesting relativity of cartridges AND bullets.

Also NOTE - real life hunting experience, not test media (mediums)<G> or speculation.

Since this thread has gone way beyond the pale of ridiculous-

7 thousandths of an inch difference in bore diameter has yielded at least 168 posts, or 24 posts per thousandth.

By that measure, a .280 vs. .30-06 thread, about calibers 24 thousandths of an in. apart, should generate at least 576 posts........

AGW-outstanding posts, very thot-provoking and well worth careful reading several times. Thnx., this is the sort of commentary which I come here to learn from.

John,

Interesting post. I have found the same thing with the .257 Weatherby, just a real quick killer.

When Eileen and I went to New Zealand a few years ago with several other people, including Walt Berger, to shoot a bunch of animals with Berger VLD's and get a real handle on their performance, we used the .257 Roberts, .264 Winchester Magnum, .30-06 and .300 Winchester Magnum. When we arrived at the place we were going to shoot and started checks the scopes on the rifle, the outfitter took one look at the long, pointed VLD's without any lead showing and went on a rant about how were using exactly the WRONG bullets for goats. Instead, he said we should be using round-nosed bullets with lots of lead exposed, so they'd really open up and knock the snot out of the goats.

Well, we confirmed that VLD's really open up, even more than round-nosed bullets with lots of lead showing. They just kept crumpling, but after the first afternoon we weren't sure whether that was due to the bullets or hitting the goats mostly in the shoulders and spine. Then Eileen shot a big billy across the head of a canyon, right through the lungs behind the shoulders, with a measly little 115-grain at 2900 fps or so. The billy crumpled and came rolling down the hill, to all appearances stone dead as soon as the bullet hit.

By the end of the hunt we'd tested every rifle with 115, 140, 168 and 185-grain bullets on goats out to 550 yards. To tell the truth I couldn't tell any difference in the way any of them killed, except there might have been an advantage to the .30-06 and .300 beyond 300 yards. ALL the bullets did so much interior damage that animals hit at all decently went down very quickly.

All the guides said the VLD was the best damn goat bullet they'd ever seen--all because it violently expanded only after getting inside the chest, making an absolute hash of the organs. It was the most interesting example I've yet seen of how little difference in "killing power" there can be in different rounds simply due to using a very damaging bullet.

JB,
Very true. I think shooting the same kind of animal helps a lot too, as you are "containing" the comparison and reducing the variables, so you are in a better position to judge the rifles, read that, bullets and loads.

Today, I look at the .30 caliber as a reliable choice for deer sized animals because it crosses into the comfortable zone in caliber for deer sized animals, the same as the .375 does for plains game in that 450+ pound size. Both very useful and reliable calibers with bullets specifically designed for them.

My standard load for the .257 Wby was 100gn Nosler Solid Bases with the lead tips and then I stepped up to the 115gn Partition from there. Slaughtered a lot of animals with 90gn and 120gn Sierra HPBT's but the bullet I liked for dynamic kills was the same one Roy E. chose, the 87gn Hornady loaded to a little over 3800fps.

John

AGW/JB: Good posts! Interesting reading.

There may be a lesson here about tough bullets and high velocity?

What works really well in a 270 Weatherby, may be less than ideal in a 270 Winchester. Plus there are variables like what we hit, and at what distance.

That. Exactamundo. Spot on. Damn straight. You ain't just whistling Dixie. Boing. Zap. Tah dah.

BR: IMO,variables, mixed into the equation, of distance, and what we hit, plus size of game, forces compromises in bullet selection. So I have fired a lot of 130-140 gr Nosler Partitions into animals from the 270 and 280 with good results.

But I have not shot as many animals as AGW or Mule Deer so might fall into that category where everything sort of blends together as far as results are concerned.

+1

Matching the bullet type, weight and velocity to the range and game animal is an art. One size (or type) doesn't seem optimal for all.

As a trivia Loony, great stuff.

Then, a hunter buys a Wally World rifle off the rack, a couple boxes of factory ammo and hammers game. That seems to work, at least for him.

But, where's the entertainment in that...?

DF

I cured the issue myself owning all three plus an Ackley improved version. My experiments yielded only that I am a rifle afficianado, that with similar bullets they all killed the same and if there was an edge it went to the 30-06. Long thread!

AGW, I have killed some goats too. Several hundred in the last few years and a good few more as a young bloke when they were considered more of a pest than they are now.

With the 270 Win on goats I consider the 130 grainers the heaviest you would want to use. And if using those, the light-ish ones driven fast over 3100fps seem to be better. Lighter bullets like the Sierra 90g HP for the 270 and in the 30-06 or 308 the likes of 130g HPs seem the go for putting goats down fast to me.

I used the 222 Rem, 308 Norma and 22 WMR as well.

Unfortunately when hunting goats its often prime pig country so you want a bullet appropriate for a good boar as well. So the hollowpoints usually get left at home and the 270 Win gets loaded up with a good 130g SP and the 30-06 or 308 with a nice 150 to 180g bullet. None of these are probably ideal for goats but will do the job of course when placed well.

As you mention however, with the heavier bullets those bloody goats will often stand there after having heart and both lungs blown to bits, not realising it until you punch another one through!