Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Why Has the 270 Winchester Fell Out of Favor?

I bet those 130's would've worked fine

Just sold a new in box Win Model 70 to a neighbor kid. Really did not need a spare spare.

I own a 338-06 and a 416 Rem Mag and have killed a fair bit of game with both. I'm still good with my selection above.

John, this might be it from the 270 article I posted on page 119, left hand column.

Good find! I'd forgotten about that article.

So my friend Roundoak is misusing the sacred text by not quoting it in context!

BTW, if anyone wants to read or print Finn's 338-06 article, it's available here:

http://nitroexpress.info/ezine/NickuduFiles/Members-PDF/Aagaard-338-06.pdf

My left hand Rem KS chambered .270 will be my last center fire rifle... The .270 just works...

I started out with the 270 Win as my first gun. It has been a great gun. I also have a 120 WSM.

My notes read: American Rifleman, December 1986.

Indeed - Okie John figured that out and gave the entire quote

I’m back to “What’s the first rifle you had that was accurate and always worked well?”
I can only think of a couple of times what I’d call a failure has happened to me, but it was poor choice of bullets, not cartridges
I shot an antelope 6 times through the chest with 105 grain 6mm bullets before he dropped. His rack is in my gun room. Those bullets did very little damage. The first bullet hit him as he was doing his morning stretch and he ran around me as I kept firing.
The second failure was with a 30-06 and 165 grain bullet on a doe. The bullet hit the shoulder and never entered the chest cavity.
Those were a couple of my first cartridge/rifles. I like them both!

I’d like to have a rifle chambered in every cartridge ever made. I won’t, but I’d like too. I’m trying.

The difference between the cartridges we’ve been discussing don’t mount to a hill of beans as far as deer cartridges.

I am trying to take a different rifle and cartridge out deer hunting each year. The smallest was a 22-250. The largest was a 300 Win Mag. The smallest deer I ever shot was at maybe 5 yards with that 300. It startled me and I shot it as it jumped out of bed. My hunting buddies somehow don’t ever forget that occasion

If you’re hunting out of a stand and you’re shooting maximum 100 yards just about anything from a 357 revolver on up will work. If you’re hunting the plains and the Mule Deer you’re trying to get is 300 yards with a 30 MPH side wind and you are not going to get closer you’ll want something bigger/better. Some might say it’s the 270, some will say it’s the 7mm RM.

Just to be safe get a 8mm Rem Mag or a 300 RUM and you’ll be covered for everything. (🙄).

Brad,

You might also buy a copy of either AAGARD'S AFRICA, published by NRA Publications in 1991, or AAGARD'S AFRICAN ADVENTURES, published by Safari Press in 2008, which includes the same content as AAGARD'S AFRICA, along with Berit's recollections on the same era.

Finn's chapter in both books, titled "Guns of the Settlers," includes this final paragraph:

"I had the great good fortune to be in the East African game fields in their heyday and thereby the opportunity to see how a great variety of cartridges performed on all manner of beasts. When I think back on it and browse through the journals that I have kept since 1956, one inescapable fact emerges. Within reasonable limits, the choice of a cartridge is not all that important. Whether a gnu is thumped with a 6.5mm, a 7mm magnum, an 8x60 or a .375 H&H seldom makes a noticeable difference. It will run about as far when shot through the lungs as one as with any of the others. Even today, as it always has been and ever will be, it is not the rifle or its cartridge that matters so much, but rather the skill and knowledge of the rifleman-hunter who is using it."

I must also note (as Finn does in the books) that he was not talking about "modern" 6.5mm rounds and bullets, but what were then the dominant 6.5s, moderate cartridges such as the 6.5x54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer, or 6.5x55, used with cup-and-core bullets of 155-160 grains.
This is an interesting observation, which somewhat contradicts his other quotes about caliber/cartridges--but was published later than the book you have.

What I found interesting was that my experience in Africa has been very similar. The "gnu" he mentions is the blue wildebeest, which many consider perhaps the hardest-to-kill plains game animal, which on average is a little smaller than elk, but not much. My experience with blue wildebeest, in four African countries, is perhaps not so oddly the same as Finn's: Hit right with a bullet that penetrates sufficiently, they die just as quickly with, say, a 140-grain from a .270 Winchester or 7mm-08 as a .300-.375 magnum. It also took me a while to realize (and accept) this, just as Finn did. But the longer I hunt, the more my experience matches his.

Mule Deer -

King Ranch is an interesting place for sure! At my skill level, I prefer a bit more margin of error for an animal of that size. I was surprised at how good Nilgai was to eat.

How did they work for you?

John yes, I have Aagaard's Africa. In fact I was in the middle of it when my son was born on a cold December night in 1992. I marked the page I was on, with the date and time of his arrival in the world. It'll go to him when I'm gone. Berit kindly offered to autograph it for me, and I might just send it off to her for that.

Finn was the voice of common sense and reason as I was coming up in the gun/hunting world. Of course I read JO too, but Finn had so much experience, was such a practical old Norwegian, as well as an honest reporter of experience, that I really took to him. A decade or so after I found Finn in the 80's, I stumbled onto this guy from Montana who struck me similarly... and of course, that's you!

Thanks for sharing the above. My hunting experience is far more limited than yours or Finn's, but even in my lean experience I've come to regard the endless cartridge/bullet debates as entertaining, but detached from reality. Put a good bullet in the right spot and its lights out, and I'd be perfectly happy with a 270 and any number of bullets to arrive at that end.

And just like that, there was no more point in being a rifle loony.


Okie John

These 2 sentences took me 40 years to come to grips with. As Brad stated, my own limited experience indicates it's not the cartridge but the nut behind trigger. I honestly didn't want to buy into the last statement for a LONG time. I made rifle/cartridge choices based on an extra 100 ft/sec thinking I was buying some kind of new magic. As a burgeoning rifle looney, the first rfle I bought was a Ruger 77 in the what-the-hell-is-that 280 Rem in 1982. A 7RM soon followed, then various 300 magnums, a couple 338s, a couple 375s. Little did I realize how right I had it 40 years ago. Wish I had all the rifle money invested in the stock market

I grew up reading the "big 3" hunting and fishing magazines, Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, and Sports afield. Outdoor Life was my favorite, and Jack O'Connor was my favorite writer. So, I read all about his experiences with the 270. When the Remington 700 Classic came out, I bought one in 270. That would have been around 1978. For the next 25 years it was my whitetail rifle.

My favorite load is 60.0 grains of H4831 and a Sierra 130 grain SP. The rifle always did shoot better than I was capable of. I killed deer with it from 15 yards away, all the way out to 450. Over the years I became interested in other cartridges, especially the 6 and 6.5 mm's, which are easier on a bad shoulder, but I've also used a 7-08, 7X57, and 308. Compared to others, my experience is certainly limited, as all I've hunted are deer here in Kentucky, but I have seen more deer dropped in their tracks by the 270 than by anything else.

My rifle hasn't been used for hunting in about 10 years, as I've gotten away from wood stocks and blued metal. But, if I'm ever lucky enough to draw a Kentucky elk tag, it will me the rifle I use.

Not at all - rifles are a thing to themself, and don't necessarily have to be enjoyed in light of any actual hunting. This forum is full of guys like that.

Never took a 270 Moose hunting but I've met a few guys who have.

Factory ammo, reloads, what bullets?