Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game 270 Wby or 26 Nosler ?

are your initials JW by any chance?

apart from D.Eusson do you remember Nev Foreman and his MkV .270wby in the top end 1970s?

I be he.
John Woods

I gave my moose/elk/deer/bear killing 270 24 inch thin barrel Wby to my son. I now use a Nosler Custom in 24 inch 270 WSM. Only thing ive lost is a couple of lbs.

The Elk won't know the difference as long as you use bullets that are up to the task. Take both.

270 is just fine.

I'm currently shooting a couple .270 Weatherbys. The first is a factory Accumark which will take a 130 NBT up to 3500 with book loads of 7828, and a 140 Accubond to 3360, also with 7828. The other has a 27" Gaillard barrel and shorter free-bore. It will do the same with a couple less grains of powder. If you want a real eye opener it will chronograph the cheapest 130grain factory Spitzers at 3700 fps without any pressure signs that I can see.

The only bull to my credit took a .277 140 gr. accubond to the ribs real hard from about 275 yds. That bullet started right at 3200 and exited after liquefying the lungs. I don't know what would equate to better performance and your extra 50 or so FPS won't hurt the equation.

I also had a 270 Wby for years taking many whitetail with it, in dramatic fashion, in the Nebraska Sandhills area, a wide open region where a flat-shooting cartridge like the 270 Wby is in its element.

Mine was a semi-custom that turned out to be not particularly accurate (or as much so as I would have liked) but still 1 to 1.25 MOA with its best loads which limited it to say 400-450 yards on deer sized animals.

I used 130-gr partitions at 3400 fps out of a 24" barrel with 7828 at the time and actually shot over an animal once at ~ a paced 275 yards at a time when your range finder was, "well, it looks like,".....

I tried many things to improve accuracy including the fashionable at the time, cryo- treatment, all to no avail. I do not blame the cartridge at all as DF shows but it was something with the barrel/chamber/action.

Even with that, I often felt it was a much overlooked cartridge that has only gotten better with more bullets and more powder choices.

New bullets, new powders have made great performnace enhancing strides with about every round.

I agree the .270 Wby has been a sleeper. It really opened my eyes.

7828 is my current powder choice for the .270 Wby.

DF

I'm a 300 Weatherby guy for elk these days using it instead of my slightly more accurate 7mm Remington Mag because I want the extra down range horsepower. I hunt primarily wide open spaces but also in the trees, many of my spots are very near some private ranch boundaries so stopping them quickly is more important to me than too a lot of hunters.

Either of your rifles will kill elk just fine - I'd go with my favorite based on the way I felt. I think a light 270 Weatherby is a very cool elk rifle and I'd carry one in a minute. I got an elk to do a backflip at 550 yards with my 300 and I see a difference but I've also had a small cow absorb one from 100 yards with no reaction even though it jellied her lugs and pulverized her off side shoulder. Unless you interrupt the CNS stopping elk is a lot harder than killing them.

If I were going to build a 2 rifle elk battery I'd probably go with a really light fast 270 for extended hikes and a kind of heavy fast 338 for less mobile hunts. I'm right in the middle with the 300 Bee for my one rifle set-up and think it is just fine but it took a while to get comfortable with the change.

The only trouble with the .300 mags (I'm going to group them, the differences are small) is that your turn at the campfire cartridge debate is very short. Those with smaller get to argue that theirs are good enough, or just as good or kick less, but few will argue that a .300 isn't a first class choice for just about everything, just about everywhere.