Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 270 bullet choice

Mule Deer,
Now to muddy the waters and slightly divert the topic off thread (I assumed the OP was asking about the 270 Win): Would you choose the same bullets for a 270WSM or 270 Wtby for the same critters?

The Hornady is pretty tough and I wouldn't hesitate to use it on deer in either of the .270 magnums. But for elk would definitely go Partition.

Unless of course you're planning on shooting beyond 500 yards....

Me - I never would except at PDs or steel. But I'm working up an antelope/deer/elk load for a bud's 270 Whizem and he's already tried for a couple of BG critters past 500. So, does that change your answer?

This is the same combo I use for practice/hunting with H4831sc. The Hornady bullets are fairly inconsistent in length from box to box but still consistently out shoot the Partitions in my rifle. The Partitions shoot MOA but my Win 70 really likes the Hornadys!.

I have shot 9 elk with the 270 Win. One with 130 grain Rem. bronze point, which Jack O'Connor praised, expanded too quickly. Two with Rem. 130 grain CLs and six with Nosler Partitions both 130 and 150, which performed nicely except one 150 grain punched through a 6 points lungs without expanding at all, which just goes to show you even great bullets can fail.

I don't have much of an explanation for what happened, but it did happen. Last fall i shot a little buck front on at about 75 yards with a 60's vintage cup and core bullet of unknown parentage, probably remington, at about 2700fps, so it wasn't moving that fast. .270 out of a ruger hawkeye.
bullet entered chest from front of chest dead center went in a few inches and turned left exiting side of deer. Deer was a bang flop, but it surprised me. I did get some 150grains when i bought all those old projectiles and i need to do some experimenting to see what they would do. On the other hand i did use a balistic tip one time on a deer that also surprised me. Inside looked like jello.

I witnessed a 403 class elk hit like that with a 180 NPT/.300 Wby. He just stood there. Hit again, he still stood there, sorta looking droopy, head sagging. After a while he tipped over, DRT. It just took him a while to realize he was dead.

DF

Elk can take a shot.
That cow would have surely tipped over if I waited a few heart beats, but it was my first elk and at first, I thought I was just plain missing. I should have known better.
The last elk I shot was a cow also. I put a 160NP thru her lungs and she casually moseyed around behind some trees before tipping over. I would have shot again, but couldn't see her behind the leaves.
Tim

I use a 140 Nosler Partition with 56.1 gr. of IMR 4831 for 3079 fps. I have shot Dall Sheep, caribou, and elk with that load. I haven't lost one yet. The last elk shot had a complete broadside pass thru. Good accurate load in my Winchester Model 70.

AS the OP was asking about factory ammo, a few years back I got a good deal on a Winchester M70 XTR push feeder that the seller said was extremely accurate. Kind of didn't believe him but a .270 selling as cheap as he had it could most likely be tuned up a bit or easily sold off with a chance of a profit. I always test a new to me rifle with some factory ammo, one to get once fired brass from the rifle in question to set up the dies and to get an idea of how it shoots. Bought a couple of boxes of Winchester 150 gr, Power Points and went to the range. First group of five was a half inch. The last groups from a fairly hot barrel was .80". Barrels don't cool off very fast when it's 100 degrees in the shade and there is no shade.
Hand loads with the 150 gr. Sierra Game King and 150 gr. Partition have been just as good and sometimes better.
On an elk hunt two years ago, my hunting partner use the 150 gr. Game King in his .270 WSM on a broadside shot at a cow elk, Shot was maybe 120 yards at the most and the elk dropped like a rock. Entrance wound was about 1.5" but the exit was over 6". I used that same bullet on an antelope hunt and my shot was at 75 yards. Bullet hit right at the short ribs breaking one and exited behind the off shoulder. Very little meat damage and the exit was about 1.50" at the most. Nicest thing about that one rifle is the Winchester load, Game King and Nosler hand loads will all punch into 1.5" at 100 yards.
Paul B.

How much, if any, do you have to drop the charge to compensate for the construction of the Partition?

Also, do you have any experience with the Sierra 150 GK BT on game? When things were really tight locally, I bought a box just to have some 150s on hand.

Thanks.

In my present .270 I run the same 58.5 grains of H4831 or 61.0 grains of IMR7977 for around 2900 fps. But this rifle has a little longer throat than some .270's, and in others I've dropped the charge for Partitions slightly.

Haven't used the 150 GK on game enough to come to any conclusions, but have shot a lot with the 130 GK, and watched some other people use it. The 130 usually works fine on deer-sized game, though what many people would classify as a failure occurred on an eating-size mule deer buck I shot many years ago. The buck was angling away at about 100 yards when the bullet hit the rear of the ribs, and collapsed on impact. When I skinned him the jacket was right under the hide at the ENTRANCE hole, but the core had cross the chest and ended up in the shoulder on the opposite side. (One of those examples of a very quickly killed animal with a bullet failure!)

A year or two later a buddy had some trouble killing a 5-point bull elk with the same bullet in the timber. I helped pack out the bull and it was shot four times in various parts of the chest, because the bullets weren't penetrating very deeply at high impact velocities. Luckily the first one got into one lung, the reason he was able to eventually whittle the bull down, but switched to Partitions after that. He was a typical ranch kid from eastern Montana who'd done some guiding and killed a million antelope and deer with the 130, but though he'd guided people to elk had never shot one himself before.

The 150 would definitely work on deer, and probably be OK game larger than deer if it didn't hit heavy bone. I have killed quite a few animals in both North America and Africa with the 160 GK from the 7x57 with zero problems, and the 150 .270 should work similarly if loaded to 2800 fps or so.

Not Mule Deer but I used 150 Sierra GK for a decade or more in a model 70 270, on three species of deer and at least one black bear, probably 30+ animals. I am a bullet collector but never did recover one of those. Ranges were 10' to 400 yards. Certainly reliable on deer and the one bear. Bonus was that my 270 shot them very well.

I'm going to shoot my next elk with a 130 grain Winchester/Olin Power-Max Bonded bullet. They are available at Wal-Mart and shoot good groups in both my CLR (primary) and 760 (secondary).

I loaded some up over some 7828 SC for use in my Mauser and as best I could tell with the red dot sight, they shoot pretty well. I also picked up some 150 NP blems, but I may save those for when I get a scope mounted (rifle has ony 3 holes and I want Talley LWs).

The Mauser's not quite as omnivorous as my M70, which pretty much swallows anything that fits in the magazine due to its generous, or maybe worn leade. I won't be pushing the GKs too hard, given the limitations of the sights and the ranges I'm likely to encounter where I hunt.

Thanks, guys.

I am interested in looking at the 140 Accubond for range performance and then use it on my next cow elk hunt. The 150 NP's haven't disappointed but looking for something different to try. My two powders are H4831 SC and H4350. We'll see what shakes out.

You will have more trouble finding a 270 factory load that doesn’t work well on deer and elk, as long as the bullet is steered correctly.

If you really want to try something different, give the 129 LRX a try. Other than that, why fix something that isn't broken???? I just wait for SPS to have the 150gr. blems on sale and use what works..

Or, for that retro look, go with the 160gr NPs.

I picked up a couple of ratty-looking boxes at a little reloading store in Winchester, VA and loaded up a batch over 56gr of 780. The semi-spitzer makes them look like something RevMike would use. The old M70 puts them an inch-and-a-half high at 100 with the 130 Interlocks an inch higher. Very convenient.

They will kill a deer, but tend to over-penetrate just a bit.

This!