Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters old school Winchester silvertip bullets?

No not ballistic silver tips but the old style Winchester Silvertip.

Looking for the BC of 140gr .277 Silvertip.
I know it was listed in the software library of the older Oehler chronographs.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks,
Dan

I used a 130 grain S/T I didn't know they made a 140 grain bullet.

They would blow big holes in deer.

.455

Winchester never marketed a 140 gr 270 Silvertip. I have shot several thousands of their 130 gr Silvertips, and used them to kill everything from gophers to grizzly bears, including the second largest moose I ever got.

Burned up a lot of the old surplus H4831 behind that bullet.
Ted

Interesting. I wonder where the 1000 Winchester 270 140gr SilverTips sitting on my shelf came from?

Actually, Winchester loaded this bullet in their premium ammo line for a few years in the early 90's IIRC. And no, they are NOT Ballistic SilverTips.

SouthTexas you are correct, I remember them.

Thanks southtexas! Do you have the Oehler data?

I could of sworn the BC was much higher, like closer to .480's. But that's why I asked, wanted to be sure.

They are equally as accurate as any .277 bullet I've ever shot.

Again thank you Sir,
Dan

DSM:

that number came from my old Oehler Ballistic Explorer software , under Winchester 270 ammunition. They do LOOK like the BC should be higher.

I got a really good deal on a bunch of these bullets 10-12 years ago. Have used them on deer in several 270WCFs and one 270WSM, with very satisfactory results.

Was really surprised to learn that Winchester never offered this bullet.

I betcha you got yours at the same place I got mine!
Feller was selling them 300 at a wack.
Word got out at the old ShortMags website, and the bidding wars ensued, actually kinda got out of hand!

Someone mention back then that these bullets were intended for the European market, I don't know the validity of that but made sense since I never seen them offered in loaded ammo or components here in the states.

I never liked them , they just didn't kill like the Winchester Power Points

The silver tip and corelokts have probably taken more game than any other bullets ever made and continue to do so. powdr

Don't know about components, but they were offered in loaded ammo...although for a fairly short time, it seems.

I just got a free upgrade of Ballistic Explorer two weeks ago and have been playing with it. The 140 gr .277 Silvertip is still listed in the ammo database. As you can see in the image the bullet has a BC of 0.455.

The new version of Ballistic Explorer automatically estimates bullet lengths for factory ammo with a claim of being within 1/3 caliber 92% of the time. The estimated length is 1.199 inches and being you have these bullets it would be interesting if you measure the length of one and post it so we can see just how close it is.

1.255"

Thanks for the feedback. So the bullet length estimator is off by just 0.056 inches which is less than 1/4 caliber. That's the kind of accuracy I've been finding in my tests. The reason I'm interested is more and more ammo is being loaded with solid copper, plastic tip, high BC bullets, all features that increase the length for a given weight. When considering some new wonder ammo I like to check what twist rate is needed to stabilize the bullet and to do that I need the bullet length. Even if the ammo is not in the database I can still use the estimator manually to get a good idea.

What did you do to get a free upgrade?

Was it a significant improvement?

Thx.

If you have Ballistic Explorer 6.x.x just open the Help menu and select Web update. It opens a webpage in your browser that lets you know if there's a newer version along with links to what's new and where to download the setup file. I've been getting free upgrades for about 10 years. Here's a link to the their What's New page.

got it thank you!

my brother killed a many a deer with the 170gr silvertip in a 30-30

I think at least two versions of the Silvertip are being confused. The "old school" Silvertip could be a decent bullet--if the jacket was heavy enough, but that apparently depended on what Winchester decided to do that decade. I have seen them expand perfectly on bigger game at relatively high velocities, and come apart on small big game at moderate velocities.

The "Silvertip Supreme" was the boattailed bullet Winchester introduced in the early 1990's, and was generally a POS because it had such a thin jacket, so came apart regularly and failed to penetrate. It was replaced in a pretty short time by the Failsafe, which at the time may have been the best all-around super-penetrating "petal" type bullet on the market, since it was normally more accurate than the Barnes X-Bullets of the era.

Winchester got really serious when they designed the Failsafe because they didn't want another Silvertip Supreme out there. Among other people, Finn Aagaard told them bluntly the Supreme really sucked after only shooting a few small Texas whitetails with it. It may have been the shortest-lived factory "big game" bullets ever.