To me, the 270 is not an Eastern cartridge. Have never understood its appeal in the East. It's at its finest as an all-around Western Cartridge, antelope to moose.
If Montana had a standing army, all would be issued 270's.
Hunting whitetails east of the Mississippi River can be done a variety of ways, just as it can be done west of the Mississippi River.
For those hunters who take a stand and over-watch an open area, like a power line ROW, a logging clear cut, or a farm field/pasture where the shots tend to be longer and more deliberate, the flat trajectory of the 270 with 130 grain bullets is an advantage over cartridges providing lower velocity and a more curved trajectory. For the hunter who is still-hunting or tracking in the woods, the higher velocity offers no advantage that i can see and therefore might not be the first or best choice for people who primarily hunt in that manner. To me, the Remington 760 family of pump guns are classic eastern hunting rifles and although they have always been available in both 270 and 30-06, the 30-06 has out-sold the 270 by a wide margin. I seem to recall hunters favoring the 30-06 over the 270 because they felt that the 270 bullets were too fast and too fragile, so they tore up too much meat, and the 180 grain 30-06 bullets "bucked brush" better than lighter faster bullets. Most of the people who I knew who hunted with 30-06 rifles favored the 180 grain Remington RN-CL or Winchester/Western PP factory loads. Most of them were WW2 vets who had confidence in the 30-06 and the Remington 740/742 series rifles that they often carried. They favored Weaver K2.5 and K3 scopes with PCH reticles mounted via Weaver tip-off mounts so that they could use their open sights at very close ranges.
When I was a kid, both New Hampshire and Vermont were covered with small family dairy farms and Maine was covered with timber. Fifty years later there is very little farming in either NH or VT, so many of the former fields and pastures have grown up into thick cover, as most have not been managed for a timber crop. ME is now a patchwork of clear cuts where there had only been dense forests. When I last lived in New England, 10/84 thru 04/90, tree stands were just starting to catch on and most people were still-hunting, making small drives (where it was legal), and/or over-watching small fields/pastures that were typically between 0.5 and 20 acres in size.
I think that the 270 is/was fairly common/popular among older hunters due to their reading of JOC's many articles in OUTDOOR LIFE magazine. I only recall one 270 shooter from when I lived in New England, a guy who worked at Ruger's Pinetree Castings plant in Newport, NH, and hunted with a Ruger 77 in 270.
