Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 270 Win w/130 gr.

My wife took a 5X5 Elk 10/11/2014 with her 270 win. using Hornady 140 gr SST bullet over R-22. One shot kill from 300 yards. Complete pass through. This bull went straight down. Bullet entered at the base of the neck just under the spine. Two vertebra were pushed up causing instant paralysis and hemorrhage from the severed artery.

That's great

What's funny is that a bunch of intelligent(?) grown men can still argue about the effectiveness of the 270 89 years after it's introduction. Sure, bullets and powders have changed but the 270 just keeps piling up dead animals. As if the 7 mag, 300 mag, 338, 375, 416, 458 or whatever has never crippled an animal. Sheesh.

The beauty of the 270 is that it can be put up in a light, accurate, easy to carry rifle that most people, ESPECIALLY THE TYRO can shoot accurately. Sure, guys that are "experts" and hang out on gun forums can handle any rifle that ever lived, but I've seen grown men that can't even handle an ought six much less a magnum.

It's always the 270 that gets picked on. WTF?

Flame on...

My old man has killed more elk with the 270win/160NP than CWD..BC and partition is kind of a moot point..

Yes, yes a .30-30 Win can shoot a 170 grain RN at 3050 FPS, but it can do it only once ;-)

The shooter probably wouldn't remember the shot.

Off track here, but I have a good friend in Cokeville,WY that adores the 30-30.

He wanted more range and bought a 30-06 a few years ago. I bedded the stock and set him up with a simple to use Burris with the two "dots". I had it dialed in to 500 yards with 165 swifts..He proceeded to miss everything he shot at for a season and a half, no fault of the rifle.

He asked if i had any pointers, i just told him to get closer and use the phuggin 30-30..

some people

Some rifles just don't fit some people. I should know.
Also, some can't handle recoil. However, years ago when I used a Win 94 32 Spec., I thought it kicked every bit as hard as Dad's much heavier 30-06.

Rosco. That is funny, but some of us have habits that are hard to break. I think he was too accustomed to using the 30-30. I'm kind of that way with the 30-06 and like cartridges.

The original question was whether a 130 grain .270 Win will kill elk. It has been done enough time to make it moot.

A couple years ago I was zeroing my rifle prior to hunting Utah mule deer. There was a well-put-up, studly dude at a bench next to me. He looked to be in his mid-30's. He was sighting in his brand new .300 Win Mag for his upcoming Montana deer hunt. I loaned him my shooting rests because it was obvious that he was having a lot of difficulty. After maybe 16 rounds, he had an approx 6" group, high left. I asked him if he was going to zero his rifle. He told me that he couldn't fire another round from his rifle. His shoulder was too sore.

Before he left, he told me that he was probably going to hunt with his uncle's .25/06 Rem, an excellent mule deer cartridge.

I'll guess that he had read gun magazines that extolled the virtues of the .300 Win Mag, and indeed, the .300 Win Mag is an excellent cartridge. But its recoil is substantial making bench shooting, which is where confidence is instilled, most difficult if not outright painful. And we can't forget that big recoil causes flinching. Flinching causes misses.

I agree with Mac 100%. A hunter who uses a suitable rifle, and we have already established that a 130 grain bullet through a bull's heart will be fatal 100% of the time, and is comfortable shooting it from benches thus building confidence, will be far better suited for elk hunting than a .300 Win Mag that he can't shoot.

I agree with Mac again. After many Rocky Mountain hunting adventures, I've learned that I'd much rather carry a lighter .270 Win than a heavy magnum.

The largest cartridge that I can shoot from a bench without recoil beating the heck out of me is my 7MM Rem Mag. I have fired big rifles. I don't like their recoil. If a hunter wants to believe that a .300 Win Mag will kill a bull deader than will a 7MM Rem Mag, or .270 Win for that matter, I'm good. After all, what another hunts with is his business, not mine. However, I'm going with dead is dead. It gets awfully deep when a hunter tries to tell me that an elk cares what reduced its blood pressure to zero. All that matters is that a bullet ends its ability to pump oxygenated blood to its brain. And everything living is dead when its brain no longer works. That is factual.

I'll bet the hunter with a .270 Win that he can shoot rather than a hunter with a .300 Win Mag he can't every time.

Bullets that stop oxygenated blood flow will result in dead animals.

Good deal!! Tell your wife congrats. Job well done.. Thanks for your input on the 140gr. SST as well..

Hi rosco,

I remember Cokeville. I stayed in a motel there a long time ago. The owner was a lawyer. He had an impressive collection of mule deer mounts on his lobby walls. There are some massive mule deer roaming sage behind Cokeville.

I have a friend with an impressive trophy room. He has about 140 mounts in it including an Alaskan griz. He used to hunt with a Mark V .300 Wby Mag. He told me that when most hunters see far off game they try to figure out how they're going to make long shots. He had a very different strategy even though he had an excellent long-range rifle. When he saw far off game that he wanted to shoot, his first thought was how he was going to close distance. He'd rather shoot game at a hundred yards than 500. When recoil became an issue, he went with a Mark V .270 Wby Mag.

To may way of looking at hunting, it's about humanely killing game, not distant shots.

Anyone that was of age and lived/ hunted Lincoln county WY in the 80's- 90's (or earlier), and was the least bit serious about it probly has a decent collection. The fella I mentioned has killed a lot more, and bigger bucks than i have,all with a 30-30.

They are cowboys, and as such more/less jump shot them off of horseback. IMHO, those days have passed.

If a guy wants a trophy mule y these days its done polar opposite of how he got his back in the day..Not sayin that dont work anymore, just not likely.

They havent adjusted, but the same tactics work these days, only the game is elk instead of deer..I've said it many times, these ARE the good old days when it comes to elk.

Yup...

Forrest

More than a few years ago I bought a 1st gen syn stocked stainless steel M700 in 300 Win Mag used but barely for $360. Didn't look like it had been shot much and it had Burris rings and bases on it. I put a Leupold Vari X 3 in 2.5 x 8x on it. I didn't really need it but my other 300 Win Mag weighed 2 lbs more with scope and I was looking for weight reduction in an all-weather pkg. The M700 had not been shot much probably because the Tupperware stock and hard as a rock recoil pad was a vicious kicker,about knock you out recoil. Hard to shoot something well when you are getting the hell whopped out of you. But going down to a 270 would not give me the performance I wanted, so I just looked around at the next gunshow until I found one of those prefit Limbsaver recoil pads that really aren't just a drop in replacement. So I fitted it correctly and went back to shooting, now the recoil was more like what my ADL 270 and 150's produced. Back on track with power, accuracy, in a shootable rifle.no, I don't think new guys at shooting need a 300 mag, they need to learn how to shoot first. Reducing your felt recoil doesn't allways mandate a smaller cartridge either. Some folks like to badmouth 300 Magnums are you one of them? I have seen elk killed with 270's and fine job done at that but that is no excuse for bashing 300 magnums that are ready to be used for larger game. Magnum Man

Hi Magnum Man,

No. I think that the .300 Win Mag is an excellent cartridge, as I wrote in a post about five above this one.

We know properties of cartridges. It's up to hunters to research before buying.

When I was a teenager, I had ability to shoot friends' big guns including the 7MM Rem Mag, .300 Win Mag, and 8MM Rem Mag. I figured I needed to start my mule deer hunting operations with a .270 Win. Through the years I've fired other big guns including the .338 Win Mag and Big Five loaded .45/70, and, of course, 12 gauges with slugs & buckshot. I never did take to shooting guns that hurt. However, I can see how they're good for other hunters.

When I figured it was time to get serious about elk hunting, I picked up a 7MM Rem Mag, a cartridge that was designed by elk hunters for long range elk killin'. Fact is, I could've stuck with my .270 Win & been just as good and elk just as dead.

In my opinion, the 7MM Rem Mag is the best magnum cartridge for all North American big game hunting. The reason is superior sectional densities and ballistic coefficients of .284 caliber bullets coupled with manageable recoil. Its bullets will travel farther & flatter & penetrate more deeply. For instance, a 160 grain .284 caliber bullet is superior in SD & BC to a 180 grain .308 caliber bullet. The reality it's all minutiae. Last I knew, big game don't know how to read micrometers.

Hunters can turn darn passionate when it comes to defending cartridges to which they have abiding loyalty. I'm good with that. But reality is emotion chases intellect from thinking when hunters take to defending cartridges they love...or gun writers need material.

I'm good with any reasonable cartridge that any hunter wants to use to kill anything he wants to hunt. However, they lose me in convoluted logic when they try to tell me that the .024" separating .308 caliber from .284 caliber is crucial when it comes to room temperature reducing elk or that a magnum will kill elk deader than an '06/.308 Win. I'm good with passionate loyalty to cartridges as long as opinions don't mock the fact that all that lives will die sans it heart. Nor is there a biology category of deader than dead. Dead is dead. Rigor mortis comes after that, not deader than dead.

I'm good going with knowing characteristics of big game I want to hunt, knowing terrain of areas I hunt, figuring out big game patterns, and figuring out how I can get as close as possible to big game I want to kill. For me it ain't about killing at distance or extreme distance. It's about hunting skill and humanely killing big game. Other than a brain shot, the best way I know to do that it to destroy oxygenated blood pumping apparatuses.

Even though my friend hunted with a Mark V .300 Wby Mag, he knew it was a whole lot more wise to use skill to stalk within a far more reasonable distance than to leave a lot of space between muzzle and animal.

Jus' sayin'...