Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Is the 270 WSM dead?

Well...

The new 6.8 Western modernized, or at least updated it.

And the ole .270Win may be getting a faster twist as well.


Sans the Flavor-of-the-Month, should hunt as good as always.

GR

If you reload no caliber is ever really dead. If availability of factory ammo matters 270 WSM is basically dead. Father has one, been looking for high quality 270 WSM ammo for over a year, on all the in stock notify lists. Nothing but low end junk Winchester stuff showing up. Went through an entire 2500 table gun show this weekend, didn't see a single box of 270 WSM. Don't mind the caliber, but you couldn't pay me to buy one right now unless it was provided with a lifetime of quality ammo. Heck it's 100x easier to find .224 Valkyrie match ammo, and guys avoid them like the plague since several manufacturers dropped making the caliber and the 6 ARC came out.

Is there a reamer that will clean up a .270 WSW chamber, or is it too fat?

If there is one, maybe that would be an option.

But altering the action to accommodate the longer round, may be too big of a hill to climb.

What are viable options for a WSM action?

DF

What are viable options for a WSM action? DF

It varies, depending on the hunter--but one of the major factors in RSA is ammo cost and availability. When I started taking part in cull hunts in South Africa, I quickly found out that everything over there cost a LOT more than we're used to paying, except during "shortages." None of the cullers I got to know used so-called "premium" bullets. Instead they used cup-and-cores, usually the cheapest they could buy, whether in factory ammo or handloaded components. Mike Birch, now the owner/honcho of Hunt The Sun safaris, was an assistant on his first job out of PH school. He preferred 130-grain Hornady Interlock Spire Points in his .270 Winchester for all culling--but when I spent a month in RSA on a big cull hunt a few years later, arranged by Mike after he took over the management of huge ranch in the Northern Cape, one of the other PHs was Rob Klemp, who along with PHing also owned a big sporting goods store in Kimberley.

Rob was a workaholic, who aside from running his store and PHing, culled springbok in Namibia every year. (He also liked to drink beer in the evening to relax, something we did together, which resulted in many interesting conversations.) At the the time his primary culling rifle was an old Sako .22-250, which was on its 4th barrel and had taken over 12,000 springbok. After he got to know me and one of my hunting partners (a former U.S. Army sniper instructor) he invited us to use the .22-250 one day, while he guided us. We not only took springbok out to 500 yards, but my partner killed a mid-sized kudu bull with a heart shot. The load Rob preferred (and we used) was Winchester's standard 55-grain Pointed Soft-Point factory load--which Rob could get wholesale through his shop. It worked fine.

But about five years ago Rob told me that the best-selling rifles and ammo in his shop were 6.5 Creedmoors, because both inexpensive rifles and factory ammo shot so accurately there was no point in handloading. Those guys are out to make a profit, and serious cullers often don't handload, because it requires time they could otherwise use culling--and hence making money.

Good news for the 270 Winchester.

Hornady 270 wsm available on midway

Lou

Darn dear, that's for sure. But great news that it's available. Makes me think maybe the Hornady brass I have been waiting for might finally become available again.

Just get a 270 Weatherby. Factory ammo and brass still available. I bought my used Mark V in 270 Weatherby for $800 from Cabela's gun library shoots well under 1 MOA.