Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Boddington on the .270 Winchester

BK - love your signature line. For my part, while I admire Atticus, I have always felt that Heck Tate was very admirable as well.

That's pretty accurate. They can be annoying, agitating, even GRATING !


Now, leave me ALONE, I ain't quittin and I ain't creedmoorin either !




Seriously, I haven't smoked in nearly 40 yrs. Second hand smoke still smells good but I don't want one.

Jerry

In my opinion, comparing the .270 with the 6.5 CM as hunting cartridges is like comparing Ford and Chevy.

Except in this case we're comparing a 1926 Ford with a Chevy ca. 2000 A.D. and the Chevy doesn't even go quite as fast.

Whatever improvement anyone thinks the 6.5 offers, it ain't much to brag about after 75 years. I'm not impressed.

As a former NRA High Power competitor, I understand why Dennis DeMille thought up the 6.5 CM for that sport and why it's better than a .260 Remington. A 0.5" difference in wind deflection can sometimes make the difference between a 10 and an X at 600 yards, and that difference can win a match. But for hunting at 500 yards or less, the 6.5 CM is just a big marketing promotion.

But what do I know? I've never killed big game with anything under .30 caliber. If it works, don't fix it.

Good post.

In my opinion the reason for all these "innovations" is simple. Hunting rifles last a loooong time, many decades. They don't wear out. The industry can't grow by selling replacements very well. They can't rely on new hunters either, because there are (unfortunately) fewer hunters every year. So they have to figure out some way to convince us to replace perfectly good rifles with ones that shoot cartridges that really are no better.

Their other big push seems to be to push guns which look "tacticool" on us.

5sdad,

My experience of anti- and pro-Creedmoorites is the opposite of yours: Anti-Creedmoorites are far more likely to break into spontaneous speeches about how the 6.5 Creedmoor is absolutely useless and unnecessary, especially in any gathering of rifle loonies--in particular those who have never fired one. But then I may not spend as much much time among many rifle loonies as some others on the Campfire. :-)

Bingo.

I'm disappointed HitnRun hasn't made an appearance. Usually mention of the 6.5 Creedmoor brings him running like Custer to a battlefield. Maybe someone killed him off too...

How about when the silhouette shooters sparked the 7mm08 craze! Layne Simpson was a big supporter and pushed it hard. Its a fine round...turned out it was just more "consistently chambered/throated than the 7x57 ( am I right or am I right? :)) It took root pretty good, but I don't hardly ever see any .260 Ammo in stores out here, much less rifles. I used a .260 on just wo animals, and for me, the 6.5/284 was far more interesting and I liked how flat it shot. But hey, what happened to the 7mm STW, and now...the 7mm RUM? And the 6.5 Remington Magnum...fuggitaboutit, ha. My Marine SIL works almost all the time. He loves to shoot out to 1K at rocks,etc. He hardly has time for anything, so he likes "easy", right now anyhow. He recently got one of those Ruger (I think) Precision Rifles in the 6.5 Creedmoor. He is tickled pink. However, he shot his last elk ( a big cow) at just over 440yds with the Mod 700 custom 300 RUM I had made up for him, and he used the loads I loaded for him, the 200 Accubond going really fast! ha. But its a lot more fun to for him, right now, to be able to buy fair priced factory ammo that he can shoot very tiny groups with. I imagine most guys who get the Creed are a lot like him. At least they are supporting the shooting industry, ha.

comerade,

The difference between the 6.5 Creedmoor and the WSM's 20 years ago is there was at first a MAJOR boom in WSM sales, especially the .300 WSM. In fact the first year the .300 WSM appeared I went on an industry hunt with the round (as did almost every gun writer in the business) and came home with a partial box of ammo. One of my local acquaintances heard I'd actually shot a .300 WSM, and not just at targets but GAME, so stopped by. He was so enthralled I volunteered to give him a round. He actually had to lean against a wall after I placed it in his hand.

But five years later the trend was on a downhill slide. While the .300 WSM is still a common factory chambering, the other SFBM (short-fat-beltless-magnum) rounds have diminished considerably in popularity.

In contrast, the 6.5 Creedmoor was introduced in 2007 without much publicity, because it was designed as a target round. Three years later enough hunters had tried it to discover it worked very well. So had similar 6.5 rounds for a long time, but the major difference was the 6.5 Creemdoor did it in affordable accurate rifles, with affordable accurate ammo.

Unlike the WSM's, sales of 6.5 Creedmoor ammo and rifles have continued to INCREASE over the dozen years since it was introduced. More and more rifle companies continue to chamber it, and more and more ammo companies continue to produce both target and hunting ammo. The only other cartridge that had such sustained staying power since I started hunting was the 7mm Remington Magnum.

If you think the 6.5 Creedmoor is a "fad" similar to the WSM/SAUM/RCM magnums, the sales trends do not support your guess.

You're high. I should just stop there, but before I do, I'll point out that a 8mm 220 Weldcore has a BC of .355. Now, that would be great for "long range big game performance" if that was a G7 BC, but it isn't; it is a G1 BC.

You're high.

Now, I read your ranting on this thread from the beginning, and you don't seem to know what "high BC" bullets are, because you keep naming Weldcores, and, basically, they are not. Not even close, actually. It was mentioned that you consider some version of "long range" unethical, so I suppose we'll call your "long range" 400 yards. Even at that range, your crappy Weldcores can easily get blown right out of the vitals of whatever you are shooting at 400 yds when getting caught in a stiff up-canyon wind that may not even be perceptible from where you are shooting.

And somehow the 6.5 160 gr Weldcore (.509 G1) will "do it far better" than say, a 150 gr Partition, or AB, or LRAB, or SST, or VLD, or whatever, out of a 270 Whatever when it comes to killing elk; and somehow, "we knew that"? Better at what? And WTF is "better", exactly?"

You're high. And you didn't have many brain cells to spare before you started getting high.

I think he retired...

The 6.5CM is the best round to have been legitimized in my lifetime. I anticipate the 22CM to be more goodness.

Well, Boddington aside, I think everything mentioned here was covered in Handloader 293, going on almost 5 years ago.

How often do you take advice from someone with exactly zero experience? Just curious.

Reminds me of when I walked into a gunshow a few years ago with a Smith 19-2 and a 53-1, both new in blue boxes...

I'd have rather heard name-calling insults rather than the junk I was offered.

BC?? I thought it was all about SD??

Depends on whose wife you ask.

True, very few wives could answer that question correctly. But I do know a few who could pick up a Creedmoor, a .270 WCF, a .243, or a .338 and just go kill big game with it.

They woudln't even know the correct SD of the bullet they were using, dumb broads.

Smokey. I don’t think H n S is talking ‘bullets’

Jerry

You have pretty hot takes.

1. "Low sectional density"

The 130 gr bullets the 270 was designed for have SD=0.242 (equivalent to 161 gr .308"). The 150 gr bullets that came out shortly after have SD=0.279 (equivalent to 185 gr .308").

That is appropriate for hunting almost anything, if not anything, in North America. And this was not designed for hunting everything in North America. This was designed as a lighter round than the .30-06, primarily for hunting deer.

2. "Excessive taper and steep shoulder"

The 270 is not a 21st-century cartridge design. This round came out in 1925. The shoulder angle and taper are in line with the cartridges of that time... and of much later, too. In fact, it has less case wall taper than the 6.5x55 SE or the 7mm or 8mm Mauser rounds.

3. "morons" at Winchester and their "slow" twist

The Winchester folks did not have a crystal ball to foresee the development of 21st century VLD hunting bullets. I don't know why they chose a 10" twist. I don't know why they chose the .270 bore, either—maybe they just wanted to sell more ammunition. What I do know is that the 10" twist and new bore diameter did not hamper the cartridge's success, as evidenced by sales of .270 rifles for the following 9 decades.

The 270 was designed to shoot lighter bullets faster than the .30-06. The 270 was designed to hunt deer. The slower twist did not hamper it in any way for this task. Yes, a faster twist would have resulted in a more versatile round. As you mentioned elsewhere, the 7x64mm Brenneke is a more versatile round. But people with the intention of hunting the largest game generally did not choose the new, lighter .270 over the .30-06.

The only big advantage of the Brenneke was the twist, and this was most likely due to two factors: that the 7mm Mauser had first used that same twist to spin its long 173-grain round nose military bullets, and that Europeans hunting did and do often hunt different game in a different manner (witness the countless iron sights and battue ribs manufacturers add to the same guns that they only offer to Americans with naked barrels). You would want a heavier bullet if you are taking a running shot on a wild boar. Even "Brenneke" is a clue. Look at Mr. Brenneke's "TIG" bullet. Not exactly a long range affair.

History, location and luck shapes these cartridges designs. Just like the 6.5 Creedmoor. The 6.5mm bore diameter would not be so popular for long range shooting if various 19th century militaries had not standardized fast twists to stabilize their heavy round nose bullets. The 6.5 got lucky.

Which reminds me...

4. Second-rate bullets too?

You say the .270 Winchester is "second-rate" or simply "crap". Because it's slow-twisted. But take the 6.5 Creedmoor and the 270, and pop into both of them Nosler Partitions, Accubonds, or Ballistic Tips, Swift A-Frames or Sciroccos, Barnes TSX, TTSX or LRXs, Hornady SSTs... basically any "regular" hunting bullet, premium or not... and the ballistic coefficients (and sectional densities) suddenly become quite similar. So what you're implying is that all of these bullets, some of which work very, very well... are complete crap!

So while you're right that it is old fashioned or simply inferior in many ways... you greatly exaggerate the importance of such. And despite being disadvantaged, it can still beat the 6.5 Creedmoor in other ways. You're altogether much too harsh on the old 270.