Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters A case for the .270 Winchester

I got my first .270 around 60 years ago. For many years it was my primary big game gun. Before long I started using 150 gr. Partitions and found they worked well for everything I hunted. Eventually I acquired other calibers just because I wanted to try them out. I have collected more moose with this caliber than any other at ranges out to 300 yards and it has always worked well.
Presently I no longer have one having given my last one to the son of a friend a couple of years ago. While talking to him a couple of nights ago he said he has already taken 4 whitetails with it.
Still have a bunch of .270 bullets sitting on the loading room shelf so who knows, maybe one day I will have another one.

Jim

One of my favorite cartridges. Have had one as long as I can remember. I don't hunt anything larger than whitetails but for my experience with the 270 is all good. I will always have at least one in the safe. I don't have a problem if someone else doesn't like it.

The 270 is only controversial for those that are so ignorant as not to use it.

MM

What mathman actually said:


Saying something is excellent would be a strange way of saying it's too old school to be good.

Hey dude, I agree with you. I was only having a senior moment with my WEIRD sense of humor. There's lots of great deer rifles. The Creedmoor has to be an excellent choice for deer and hogs. I also think the .260 is a great choice and the differences between it and the Creed are minimal and if you chamber a rifle that has a longer action than a Remington or some of the other short actions it would outdo it. But for those of us that love the 700 SA the Creedmoor gives the edge.

Do you know if there is a 7mm Creed and would it give the same benefit as the 6.5 Creedmoor in a short action?

However having said all this, I still prefer my ratty ol' .270 Win. because I can't argue with success.

Have had a 270 in my safe for about 40 years. Even though I own and hunt with other calibers, 270 remains a favorite. Also had a 270 Bee built, like that too. Do not own any 6.5's and no burning desire to either. I do not shoot over 500 yards and quite honestly there is just not enough of an advantage under 500 yards to justify one.

I am unaware of any controversy surrounding the .270Win other than questions of its sexual preference found here at the 'fire.

I must really be getting old because all this who-struck-John about cartridges is staring to wear on me about like Russian Collusion (apologies to John Haviland).

They all work just fine.

The End.

Thank you .270 Winchester. I think I read that a while back but forgot about it. It's a great article and not only points out some good things about the .270, but also some fundamentals to successful hunting no matter th rifle used.

I've had a 270 for about 40 years. For 25 or so of those years, it was my one and only choice as a whitetail cartridge, and it performed perfectly. I began to experiment with other cartridges, and over the years I've developed quite a love affair with short action rifles, and the cartridges designed for them. I've only had a 6.5 CM for a few years, but have gained a lot of respect for it, and find myself hunting with a 243 just as often as not.

With that being said, if I were to draw a Kentucky elk tag, the 270 is the rifle I'll take. If for some reason, I decided to start selling off rifles, the 270 would probably be the last to go. It will do anything I need it to do, and is deer cartridge supreme, taking a back seat to none other. If you are fan of cartridge history and development, the 270 was the original long range cartridge, and is just as good today as it was almost a 100 years ago.

Rubbish.

Pronounced "bullshit".

There's as many .270 proponents here as there are detractors and jokers. I say jokers because on my forum I have lived on for 12 years there are a lot of jokers about the .270. However, there are 4 or 5 true believers that the .270 isn't worth the time, that there is no justification for it, and it should never have been made a legit cartridge by Winchester. But I feel that most of those guys have never even shot one and have no first hand knowledge of it.

As for no justification for it, I will say the reason Winchester went with the .277 diameter rather than the true 7mm is in my opinion, is that it came out when, in 1925, 7 years after WWI. People in the late teens and twenties in this country were strictly anti anything German.

My German ancestors landed right here on Matagorda Bay on the central Texas Coast at the old town of Indianola TX as their point of entry into the US. They, like most German Immigrants wanted to assimilate into the culture and be Americans. However, at home they still spoke in Deutsch and ate their Kraut and Schnitzel.

However, when WWI came about, it suddenly got real unpopular to be anything German in the US. So my family quit speaking German and started blending in even at home. I had an old maid great aunt that I was raised around that would even deny her German heritage and only acknowledge her mother's side of the family which was English. That was in the 50s through the 70s.

So the prevailing mood here around the time the .270 Winchester was conceived was anti German and probably anti anything European. So I doubt that Winchester wanted anything MM referring to their products.

I think that Winchester didn't want a bunch of cheapskates re-chambering various 7mm Mausers, especially 93s and 95s, thus killing their market and maybe blowing themselves up occasionally as well.

Germany, as you may recall, used 7.9x57 rifles. Never heard anyone call,the 7x57 the 7x57 German Mauser.

You think not? Go to the G&A Forums and start raving about the virtues of the .270 Winchester. You'll get laughed out of the room! Even right here there's a few. But there and a few more forums and you'll find that it's a majority.

You're right about that. It was probably a combination of those two. That would have been dangerous for sure, chambering a high pressure cartridge, equal to the .270 Win. which is a 65,000 PSI rated cartridge, in one of the weaker older Mausers. About 35 years later Remington brought out the .280 and thought about another potential and an even more likely scenario of chambering a true 7mm in a .270 Winchester and got around it by increasing the length of the case from the base of the cartridge to the shoulder .050 longer so it couldn't be chambered and the bolt closed in a .270 Winchester.,,

Good...go there and join them you halfwit.

i've had a few and i'm always on the look out for another one. i know we give the old cartridge a bad time, but we like to tease some old fart that likes leopard undies's, by the way where is that famous guy!

Where ever Ingwe is you can bet that he is doing it in style.

I use a .30-06 mostly, but also use .270 Win. sometimes. If a .30-06 wasn't available my next choice would be .270 Win. The next would most likely be .308 Win. If it is .277 through .308 caliber and accurately achieves 2800+ fps without punishing recoil it is good enough for me. I have shot magnums and don't see the need, but then I don't go to Africa and don't often take a shot over 350-400 yds. Most are closer, as is probably the case with the huge majority of hunters.

At the time Winchester brought out the .270 in their Model 70 it was the Creedmoor of the day. It was designed from the start as a hunting cartridge though, not a competition cartridge. Most people who wanted something to hunt with used the 30-06 and it did a decent job. you could get decent factory loads for it and if you handloaded you could do better. As time went on better bullets came out. It was the favorite whipping boy for the Elmer Keith crowd. It seemed like there was a huge following of the "big bore boys" that had a field day bitching about it. It's the same today and you can add the Creedmoor to it. It seems like people just can't resist the opportunity to defame anything they don't use.

I have had quite a few .270's in different actions and have hunted and handloaded for it for quite a few years. It has done well and I have no complaints about it. I use other chamberings as well because I pretty much like them all.