Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 9,3 x 62 Mauser vs. .270

If a Yankee has a 9.3x62 does he still have to own a .35Whelen?

targets of opportunity there for you buddy.

Hit that pavement in front of them and "bark" the both of them critters with that .460!

Not if he is smart. The 9.3x62 is a better round. The truth of the matter is there really is no reason for the Whelen to exist. All he did was take the 30-06 and neck it up to 35 caliber. The 9.3x62 is basically the 30-06 necked up to 36 caliber. You can make 9.3x62 brass by running 06 brass through a sizing die, fire-forming it and trimming it. Whelen solved a problem that had already been solved decades before.

For what it is worth, the 30-06 cartridge is based on the 30-03 cartridge which was in turn based on the 7x57 Mauser cartridge. The Springfield Model 1903 rifle's action was so similar to the Mauser 98 action that Springfield was required to pay royalties to Mauser until WWI broke out. Germany is responsible for a lot of great rifles and calibers.

Depends on if the Whelen has the correct twist.

I really like my big guns. I have also been killing elk since I was a boy. I have killed elk (as well as other large game) with MANY different rifles and calibers and a whole lot of different bullets for over 1/2 century.
The 2 cartridge you mention are 2 of those I have the most respect for.

I stared with my Dad's 300 Savage in the 60s, and first rifle I ever owned myself was a 270. In my life, the smallest bore cartridge I have ever killed elk with was the 270 Winchester and the largest is a 45-70. The most powerful that I killed elk with is a 416 Taylor .
Many people don't believe me when I tell them what I will now tell you. But this is the honest truth.

Looking at every elk I have ever killed and thinking back to the ones that "bang-flopped" the most--- the ones that hit the ground the fastest were mostly shot with 270 Winchesters and 375H&Hs

I have said many times, and I still say that when good bullet placement was done and good tough bullets (non fragmenting) were used, I never could see any difference in how well a 270, 280, 30-06, 7MM Weatherby Mag, 7MM Remington Mag, 300 H&H, 308 Norma, 300 Winchester, 300 Weatherby, or 338 Winchester killed elk. And of the ones I have personally killed, the ones that ran the farthest after a good hit were hit with 7MM and 300 mags. None went all that far, but the most "bang-flops" I have seen in my own shooting were all from 270s and 375H&H. Kind-da on opposite ends of the line don'tcha think?
Yeah.............they are.

As a side note..........I got very interested in the 9.3X62 about 7 years ago from seeing it used, and so far, if good bullets are fired I see no difference between the 375 and the 9.3X62 on elk. I made one now for myself and I really like it a lot.

That's what I have seen in the 54 years of elk hunting that are behind me now, --- 54 years in several states and in about 10 of those years I was killing elk in several states per year. Those are the facts. I have theories as to why but that all they are. Theories! And I have trouble explaining some things even within my own theories.

Just as an example: I killed elk with some 7MM Mags (Weatherby and Remington) and I used 160 and 175 grain Nosler Partitions for most of them. I used 150 and 160 grain Nosler Partition in my 270s many times. With near identical hits and all within similar ranges, the 270s dropped the elk RIGHT NOW (at the hit or within about 1 second) and the 7MMs let them run or stagger 20-35 yards. Often with 300 magnums, also with good bullets, the elk stagger for 3-4 seconds. Not bad at all.

But the 270s very often simply dropped them. Why? I honestly can't even guess.

The 270 is the smallest diameter bullet I have personally used on elk, and my 150 grain bullets were tied for lightest bullet weight used on elk with 280 Remington,(150 Grain Nosler Partition)
308 Winchester (150 Grian Winchester Power Points) and one shot with a 308 Norma. (Norma Factory load) But I have never shot an elk with anything lighter then a 150 grain although I have seen elk killed with 100 grain 243s, 115 and 120 grain 25s and 140 grain 6.5MMs many times. My one 45-70 kill was with a 450 grain cast bullet, and my "most powerful kill" was with a 400 grain .416 bullet. The 45-70 elk went about 10-15 feet and the one killed with the 416 went about 30 yards and then stood still for a good 10 seconds before falling.

So that's my "report"
Does that make sense? Well.......... it doesn't seem to. But the facts are just exactly what I wrote here. I'll leave it to others to explain it. Because I truly can't say for sure.

What I do feel confident in saying is that the 9.3X62 and the 270 both work REALLY well when you shoot bullet that expand and don't break up.

Don't form 9.3x62 brass from '06 if planning to load the round to modern pressures. The problem is that '06 brass is smaller in the body than 9.3, which results in a 9.3 case with a case that's unsupported in the chamber just forward of the casehead. Worse yet, Hornady makes their 9.3x62 brass from '06 blank brass so one can enjoy this failing straight from the factory. Exacerbating the problem, RCBS dies are made to re-size back to the incorrect '06 dimensions since RCBS dies were made to go along with their '06 to '62 forming dies they made years ago when most 9.3s in this country were old guns grandpa liberated from the Germans. All this adds up to a bad situation waiting to happen.

I found all this out when I had two incredible case failures in once range session. Two hornady cases split right through the casehead. Subsequent research revealed the above issues. For what it's worth, I now know Lee and Redding know how to make a properly spec'd 9.3 sizing die. Lapua, Norma, and Privi know what 9.3x62 brass is.

The guy that said the 9.3x62 is inferior to the 270 hasn't hunted moose with a 270 . The 270 might be the perfect mule deer round, but certainly not for a moose.

Not totally accurate. Bock created the round specifically for German colonial farmers as an all round rifle which could work in a mauser. It was expected to handle all classes of game. It was by all accounts the most successful bolt action in history on the African continent. It was only because the mauserwerke factory was destroyed by Allied forces in WW II that the 375 took the mantel of the Africa all purpose round.

Inside 300 yards I concur with an earlier poster that it's all that. And a.bag of.chips.

I don't. I use Lapua. But in a pinch you can make it from 06 brass.

I don't shoot animals any farther than that, and I love my 9.3X62 in general. I opt for the '06 or 7X57AI mostly, however.

The 9.3 has a definite classic cool factor, but so does a 270.

And real schidt bullets for them

9,3x62 was created as an 'all round' performer.
Application depended on which primary pupose
the variety of German colonists required.

I'd say colonists employed it much more
regularly as a 'meat gun' than shooting
troublesome lions...so that could be a
private farmer just feeding his family,
up to large enterprise business, with
an army of mouths in their employ.

Thus I find it hard to believe that the desire/need
of colonists ranging from German West Africa,
and East Africa;.. Namibia, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania,
Cameroon, Togo land, Tanganyika, Ruanda-Urundi, etc. was primarily for a lion specific cartridge.

~~~~~
WDM Bell told of one Sihk officer who used
7mm Mauser to collect bounty on 90 lions.
That tells me .270 win could accomplish the
same task.
Bell himself took a charging lion with 7mm
that his hunting partner could not close the
deal on with SxS .450,.. Bell also took another
lion with his. 256 bore Mannlicher.
When he hunted troublesome lions
for British Rail, he used .303 Cal.

Cool Factor, 9.3x62 indeed, 7x57 Ackley most defiantly, 270 Not So Much.

I own a few firearms that I feel have the "cool factor".
7MM-08 Ackley
6.5x55 Ackley
30-06 Ackley
25 WSSM
6.5x55
9.3x62
10MM Auto

Usually farmers didn't have a cabinet full of rifles.. 2-3 at the most.
So they needed something that could handle anything.. even crop raiding elephants.

9,3x62 maximizes what you can get out of a standar M98 action without much alteration or excessive recoil.

And it was the mainstay of nearly all African hunters up until 50s-60s. until supplies ran out.



The 270 is just a Chinese 7x64. Another great German round.


.

Softball vs bowling ball.


Not a fan of either.


Our girls play softball, so the edge goes there.


As different as the two rounds are, either can be used for darn near anything.
And I bet one would kill faster than the other with good bullets in good places.

But that becomes a whole other pissin' match.

Now if the argument was,

280 vs 35 Whelen...


Might hunt with anything from 243 to 338.
And honestly can't guess which one will do what before
any one shot. Trends? Oh yeah. But on one shot? Nope.

Only if it's on a pre-64 M70.

I like apples better than oranges, BTW.