Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting 270 WSM or 26 Nosler w/28" barrel

All right guys which one will reach out and touch the straightest using 130 gr. bullets?

I know the BCs on the 26s are slightly higher than the 27s, but is there enough difference.

These guys pioneered the .270.......

I don't think the difference will be worth worry about

I know, I know. The 270 has a certain mystic that is not always excepted in the normal culture, that would mean that the late great Jack O'Conner must have been to a few rainbow parades which I don't think was the case. Second of all I already own the WSM and it has done a great job doing some bang flops on deer out to 615 yards. just wondering if I should add 4" to the barrel or go ahead and buy a Montana X2 with a 28" barrel in 26 nosler.

Whichever one you can get with a 28" barrel. That's what I always say.

When you say reach out how far are we talking. Under 500yds won't make a difference over 500yds the 26 is the way to go. Even at 500yds we are talking a 7" difference in drop with the 26 0ver the 270.

I'm coming out of the closet for the WSM.

I'm really gay for that particular 270.

Dan

Buying or building?

W

28" is pretty long unless were talking shotguns.......

I am looking to have a fun gun that will reliably shoot to 700 yards. I currently am using a 70 in 270 WSM and it can do that. I want to do something different because I can. I was going to build a 26 nosler and after doing research realized it and the 270 WSM were almost twins except for bullet BC and SD. Now I have gravitated toward taking my 270 and necking it down to 6.5 and calling it good. As far as the 28" barrel, were I hunt it is not a concern about the length. All open country. All my mountain guns are 26" barrels and if you get in brush you are going to pack it anyhow.

The 26 Nosler and 270 WSM are in no way, shape, or form even close to ballistic twins.

Tanner

I was just using noslers cartridge data sheet to get my info. They show a 270 WSM w/24" 130gr. Accubond with a BC of .435 traveling 3300 ft. out of a 24" barrel. Then a 26 nosler w/129 accubonds at .561 with a 26" barrel maxed at 3400'. The 26 has a higher BC, but the other numbers are pretty close. Enlighten me please.

Examine drop/drifts at various ranges with those loads mentioned. The 26 will smoke virtually anything the 270 WSM will bring to the table, due to increased case capacity and inherently higher BCs.

That being said, I'd keep shooting your 270 WSM if all you want to do is shoot to 700. It'll handle that order just fine.

Tanner

If you plug in the 130 accubond numbers to even the bc score your 70 improves greatly...

W

6.5saum!

I consider bore size largely irrelevant, but bullets are, so I didn't see much to recommend the 270 WSM over the 270 Win when it was introduced. The 7WSM had potential, but I didn't see much point to the WSMs in general.

But I happened across a gaggle of Win M70s when Winchester was going BK, and some of those were chambered in 270 WSM. I happened to mention this to a buddy of mine and he said he wanted one for a donor... ok...no problem. I had one particularly miserable specimen with an oval chamber, so I just gave it to him.

A few weeks later he comes over making noises like "Hey, I've been playing around with this thing and it isn't that bad..."

Say what? NEVER shoot the donor!

Now my buddy is also a fan of long range rifles, with many fine examples in his safe...some that I screwed together, so I know. He has the likes of 300WM, 300 RUM, 338 Lapua, 7mm Mag, etc., as well as more exotic chamberings to choose from, and all of them are capable and powerful long-range hitters.

So when he asks me what would it take for me to put together a long barrel fast twist rifle for him in 270 WSM to play around with, I said it wouldn't take much, but it wasn't going to happen...sometimes you just have to stand on principle, so 7WSM sure, but 270 WSM my a$$.

Well, he is nothing if not persistent, and a long-time friend that happened to have beer, so he eventually ended up with a 28.5" light LR profile 270WSM.

Several years later, and it turns out that rifle is now his favorite go-to LR hammer with many long range kills under his belt with it, including 950yd Elk, several 850+ cow elk, over 1000yd deer, coyote, etc.

So what is the appeal of the 270 WSM?

Based on experience in the field, the 270WSM is just as capable at the LR game as the bigger hammers, and seems to dispatch game very efficiently.

Lighter by many pounds, but still comfortable shooting with NO brake, unlike his other rifles that wear brakes. The recoil is noticeably milder, no brake so it's quieter, and the barrel life is as good or better than most of the alternate choices.

Loads use a lot less powder than the bigger boys do, and the longer barrel adds 300 fps over the factory version.

When compared to a 6.5 we're talking about 2-3 times longer barrel life. The hot 6.5s, even the 6.5x284 eats barrels pretty fast. That's important, because the ability to put rounds consistently on target at 900 yards and beyond does tend to take more load work up and range time.

Of course none of this .277 magic would be possible without the availability of the excellent Matrix bullets. Matrix seems to be the only company out there that cares about the 277.

The 26 Nosler is definitely a hot-rod, so expect short barrel life, but with a nitrided bore some useful barrel life can be recovered.

The 7WSM, would be my choice, but considering that at 700 yards, nothing exotic is necessary at all. A 130 grain bullet will get you there easily, but adding horsepower is no substitute for better BC as ranges grow longer.

As the Matrix 165gr does seem to stabilize in a 10 twist barrel, before spending a lot of dough on a new rifle, I'd try a box of .277 bullets with higher BC and go from there.

Either way, if you're capable of putting 2+2 together, it's not too hard to make things work out.

A dude that rips on a .270 (or .270 WSM) with a ridiculous picture, probably took the pic and was really thinking about how it pleased him when nobody was looking...like the old joke about scooters and fat chicks...not overly entertaining.

In my hunting career, the .270 WSM has served me very well. I'm not much of a long range shooter but I've shot my share of critters inside of 500 yards. My go to round with and HS Precision PHL is 73 grains of Magpro with a 140 TSX going 3245 out of the snoot. It's been very good to me!

However, I'm investigating the 6.5 SAUM just for fun...

I think the moral is, you can't believe everything you read on the internet.

If you are only shooting to 700 yards, and your target is deer, there are a BUNCH of standard cartridges that will do that accurately, with ease, without going to a boutique round like the 26 nosler.

Heck a .260 (or any of the various cartridges that are very close in concept) would work very easily for deer.

In a short action, standard .270, 7mm, and 300 WSMs would all work, as would any of the similar long action cartridges.


If you want to be good, it takes practice, which costs money. Generally speaking, the more you practice, the more you improve your skill set, so lets look at costs.

26 Nosler brass ($66 for 25 rounds at Midway USA) is absolutely retardedly expensive for what it is. That is $264 for 100 rounds of brass.

At the same store you could get 100 rounds of 7 Rem mag brass for $73.

Personally, I would rather be able to practice a bunch with a 7 rem mag, versus very little (with equal amounts of $$ spent) with a 26 nosler, when it came time to make a critical shot. You simply cannot buy a skill set.


If the 26 nosler had brass available at a similar price as 300 win and 7 mag brass, then it might be worth it, but at the grossly inflated price that they charge for the boutique cartridge, I could not recommend it to anybody.

Either way you are dialing for the shot, and there just is not enough of a difference to justify it (to me).

In short,from my perspective, the juice is not worth the squeeze.

Others may feel entirely different.

The barrel on that 26 will be gone by the time you learn to use it.

Lefty C