Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Recoil & under 400 yard pros & con's diff's 'tween a 270 WSM and a 270 Win ??

Been shooting a 270 Win since the early '70's and have been very satisfied as a Texas WT rifle& all 'round critter getter. "Back in the Day" before range finders as a 2 gun travelling hunter with frequent hunting invites from customers I paired the 270 Win with a 300WMg. Now at 75 and at the end years of my journey, I've pared the arsenal down to 3 hunting rifles ( a 6.5 Swede & a pair of 270's) and a collectors quality USRAC 7x57,and eliminated the belted shooters, with a NIB Wby VG SS 7Rmg tucked away for the last 4 years as the go to step up LR caliber. Having said all that ...am I picking nits to switch to a 270 WSM to narrow some of the components list. Only reason I have not shot the 7Rmg has been a 13 year chronic shoulder issue that recently has been "resolved" at least to a "useful" level, so the recoil issue is not as paramount a consideration as it once was.

Ya'll thought's please... and welcome to January's housebound reflections of what went right or wrong in last years deer season. The neighborhood WT's are still here with a really nice full grown buck greeting us on the Lab's Potty Patrol this morning.
Ron

+/- roughly 200fps w/same projectile. You’re going to have to pick some mighty small nits to find an advantage.

Just my two cents, I don’t think there is a big enough difference in the .270 Win and WSM to make a hill of beans. And the 7mm Rem Mag is not a quantum leap above either in hunting applications. The typical heavy Vanguard should not be unmanageable with lighter bullets. Your battery should serve you well for deer hunting and more. I’m planning to use my 7x57 when I can’t tolerate by big shooters for elk. Happy Trails

Insignificant on the recoil. Gain about 100 or so yards effective range with equal bullets! memtb

memtb,

How are you figuring the 100 yards of added "effective range"? Trajectory, energy?

I've done considerably hunting with both the .270 Winchester and .270 WSM on big game up to 800 pounds or so--enough to say I've never noticed a practical difference in trajectory or killing power. If you load a typical spitzer boattail to 3100 in the .270 and 3250 in the WSM (which is about the real-world difference), then sight them both in 2" high at 100 yards, the WSM bullet will land about 2.5" higher at 400.

The recoil difference, using Sierra's Infinity program and an 8-pound rifle, is 21.0 foot-pounds for the Winchester and 26.7 for the WSM. Whether that's significant or not depends a lot on the individual shooter.

Looks like you are in East Texas. Most WSM’s only hold three in the magazine vs. four for .270 in a M70. Hunting in Texas with the feral pigs omnipresent, that extra round is a very real advantage vs. 100 - 200 fps which will not be a noticeable advantage inside of 400 yards.

Mule Deer,

The “100 or so” yards, was using the Swag system....please note the “or so”. Recoil.....5.6 pounds of recoil is likely “insignificant” to most kindergarten children. Well, maybe not today’s kindergarten children! memtb

You are gonna get one shot at a pig in east Texas. Them mo fos will be gone. I think they can run faster than deer.

I don’t think a 270 shirt mag has any more recoil. I have a couple of each. I like them even if they are gay. I have a 270 Weatherby also, I’d say it’s a touch more.

The 270 WSM is quite popular here. The guys that have them like them.

memtb,

Yeah, 5.6 foot-pounds wouldn't matter to a kindergartner--because that's about the recoil of a .223 Remington sporter.

But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about another 5.6 foot-pounds on top of what may already near the OP's limit--and he specifically mentions recoil as a concern.

During my guiding days I ran into more than one he-man hunter who couldn't really the recoil of a 7mm Remington Magnum. I know this because often when we did the standard scope-check on a target before the hunt started, they'd shoot such large groups (as in 6-8" at 100 yards) that I'd start to suspect there was something wrong with the scope or rifle. Then I'd shoot typical decent groups with the SAME rifle and load.

I'm not talking about what YOU consider mild recoil, or anybody else here, but a .270 WSM recoils just about like a 7mm RM.

Mule Deer is 100 % right ,for people that are recoil shy i tell them to consider a 7mm -08 .

John, OK, I concede that point. I didn’t think there wasn’t a great deal of difference between the 270 Win and the 270 WSM, only having experience with the 270 Win. So I, incorrectly, thought that with similar rifle weights and similar bullet weights.... recoil would be very similar. I guess I growing up in a different era...... at 14, shooting a relatively lightweight.308 Win. with plastic butt. I’m certainly “not” a tough guy or “he-man”......I guess I just learned to tolerate recoil. I also tend to forget that many people have shoulder issues, rotator cuff, arthritis, bursitis, ect. , which certainly plays into recoil tolerance! I should have “fully” read the OP’s post, and owe the OP an apology! memtb

For those who are recoil shy, I'd suggest 7x57. I'm slowly giving my hunting rifles away to grandchildren when they turn 12. So far, a 30-06, two 270 Wins, a 25-06 and my beloved push feed Model 70 Featherweight 7x57 have all left the safe. I'm 63 years old now and will hold on to my 24" barreled 1952 FN Mauser 7x57 with a vintage 3-9x Redfield scope. It'll work for everything I may hunt between now and my passing. When I'm gone, it's willed to my son.

Regarding magazine capacity with bolt guns in pig country: While pigs here generally all bolt when you shoot one, they will occasionally do like you mention and run around for a few seconds, sometimes coming back across a shooting lane to regroup with the herd. In those instances, you can often get another shot or two at walking pigs.

An odd thing that I've noticed is that I've gotten multiple kills from the same spot on dark and rainy days. Whack one, the herd runs off, only to come back out a few minutes later. They'll sometimes catch on after 2-3 get killed, only to ease off into the brush, sometimes appearing nearby on another shooting lane a bit later.

Years ago, my hunting buddy and I were sighting in our deer rifles. His was a 700 sporter 7 RM . It had just the hard plastic butt late and I said then I’d never own a 7 mag sporter weight. Thinking about it now, it’s probably fine with a decent recoil pad. Craig Boddington (if memory serves well) wrote an article a while ago stating the 270 win. does pretty much everything a 7 mag will do for big game hunting when comparing the same bullet weights.

Domiciled in East Texas, yes, about an hour S'West of Tyler in Palestine, 2 hours S'East of Dallas. Have always hunted anywhere I can and have hunted almost everywhere in Texas except the Big Bend before and after I spent more than a few years schlepping shooting stuff in up to a 5 state area.. The shoulder issue is an old one, but found out recently no surgery is required ...just gotta learn to live with a double hand full of bone spurs to tolerate.

Re: 200fps difference...about what I had expected. One of my 270's, is a wood blue M70 24" barreled FN Carolina built Ultimate Shadow, wearing a takeoff factory Sporter stock and is used as a Box Blind/Tower shooter with a big scope on it. The other 270 is a pleasant surprise to shoot comfortably in a Marlin XL 7 SS with it's factory stock that was bought as do all rough gun...and shoots good enough that I am looking forward to reloading for it and clean up for my rusty skills 3 years ago I had bought aT3 SL 6.5 Swede as a step down recoil shooter but had a bad experience with some ancient freeby PMC ammo that rocked my world & shoulder with bigtime recoil and traded the rifle off on a little heavier T3 Hunter Swede, just like I had had before the medical issue with the shoulder erupted 13 years ago. Sold or selling off all the other CF Rifles and would rather sell/trade the USRAC M70 7x57 than beat it up in the field.
RE plentiful hogs...YES all over my neighborhood. Guy at the foot of the hill 1/2 block away has a contract trapper guy, who the city has winked at and is using a suppressed something after the hogs wised up to the traps and is regularly "harvesting " at will hogs up to enough past 200lbs to be worried about his family and pets, at his back fence.

Thanks Ya'll for the advice ans responses...no new news here though but ya'll are spot on with the reality check.
Ron

M70 with a hinged floor plate will hold 5 non-magnum cartridges in the belly.

I've pondered this same cartridge loonism. Keep your 270 Win, find some Re 26 and have fun. I've shot more than a few critters with 270 Win, 280 Rem, various 7 mags and I see no real advantage over the plain jane 270 loaded with good bullets. I comfortably got 3000 with my last 270 and 150 Partitions. I even managed to kill a couple elk at a combined distance of less than 65 yards, one measured in feet. Miraculously, it worked. Deer really don't like that combination. Never shot a pig wih a 270 but can't imagine it would be any different.

The other thing I'd say with respect to recoil. You can buy a lightweight 270 (Kimber MT), mount a good scope on it and keep it under 7 lbs. A 6.5-7 lb 270 shooting 150 gr bullets at 3000 isn't a wimp in the recoil department - about like an 8lb 7 mag/270 WSM. The difference is the 270 will be in the 25 ft/lb range and the 7/270 mag in simialr weight rifles will break 30-31 ft/lbs. Again to me, I've always noticed when recoil exceeds 30 ft/lbs. If I hadn't bought a 280 AI after my 270 was "donated", I'd already own another 270 win - and bypass all the WSM, WM, and the like. I'm still tempted to buy another - just because.

Last ?? ....are there any benefits in handling recoil using a thumbhole stock like a Boyd's or mebbe one of the LR style stocks with a more verticle pistol grip ?? Both my right hand and shoulder are medical wrecks, It seems to me that there might be some advantage to handling heavier recoil better with a more verticle hand grip so you could use your palm to take more of the recoil pulse with.

A LR Comp shooter I know uses & touts a particular Manners stock I think it is, for his comp rifle's....dunno if Manners even makes a stock for my Marlin XL7 and I would expect the Manners stocks are a "little too spendy" for a beater of a rough gun ...or as my Cajun friends would say a "pirogue gun" ...which is sumthin to both paddle the pirouge with, an' beat the dogs off the fresh dead critter with before they ain't nuthin' left for dinner.
Ron