Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa 270 WSM on Plains Game?

It's the ballistic clone of the 270 Weatherby and I've seen that kill everything from elk-sized animals on down with devatating (and boring regularity). It WILL do fine by you. jorge

With the really good bullets that can be had in 270 these days, I would not give it a second thought to it. I when on my first trip a long while ago, with a 7mm Remington Mag and every thing I shot fell over or just about. And bullets across the board are a whole lot better now than in 1971. Nope I would just find a good load, and shoot a lot off the bench, tell you leave for Africa.

If it were my client I would like to see the development and zero from the bench, after that never use the bench again. Shoot while, prone, sitting standing, from sticks, and any place you can shoot off the hood of a truck, backpack, etc. Use real world options.........forget the bench!

Also see where exaclty do your bullets impact at 30-40 yards, what does your sight picture look like through the scope at that range. Odds are much greater you will shoot something at 30 yards then at 300!

It's still hard for me to accept that a hole potentially .02-.03" wider at entrance or .05-.06" wider at exit (assuming 2x) makes any difference in bloodtrail. I've never seen it, but also don't hunt critters over 300lbs very much. Sure the hole may be 20% wider or whatever, but it's still a very small number. I can understand if the argument is heavy bullet/caliber for breaking heavy bone, etc...

Lou

Yeah I get that response all the time, It's Okay with me that some may struggle with this. But if there is so little differnce between the .284 and .308

Then the same can be said for .284 and .257........or .257 and .243.......... or .243 and .223

It goes the other way as well, not much between .338 and .358 or 358 and 375. Fact is the difference is there, and it happens to make a noticable difference right at the 30 caliber diameter. As I said, I'm not claiming a fountain of blood flows from .308 holes. What I am saying is that there is a noticable difference between the blood flow, quantity, and length of trail when you are at .308 and above comparing the same evidence trial to .284 and below.

I'm not marketing this idea, I make no money from it, I have no vested interest in whether anyone wants to believe it or not. It's simply the feeling of many PH's and it comes from first hand experience in tracking and following game.

Lets try to look at this from the bottom line of an outfitter. At the end of a season if you have failed to recover a dozen aniamls that were shot with various cartridges you need to think about why. That is a potential of 10,000 bucks or even more money lost if you did not find any blood.

You see the animal hit, you see it stagger or hunch up. But not a drop of blood and you never find the animal while the hunter is in camp. Many camps have a no blood no pay rule. I for one have spoken to hunters about this and when its obvious they have knocked the animal down but there is no blood it's a hit. After this happens a few times you start to see a common issue. The majority of lost game is from sub 30 caliber cartridges. Then you begin work with those hunters differently, to the point you really want to be sure they have a good clear close easy to make shot. Compare that to the fella shooting a .338, 358, 375, and you let them make any shot they want.

Often more depends uppon the shooter. I took a father and son team a few years ago. The Father was retired CIA, the son was an FBI sniper. The son used a 7mm mag. He simply and with ice in his veins flattend everything he shot. Except the zebra, which bolted and ran at the shot. We saw a couple drops of blood a distance from the impact point, but never another drop again. We searched for more then a day without any luck. So even though he was clearly skilled cool and calm that little hole did not allow any blood at all to flow and we lost a zebra with what had to have been a less then perfect shot. But nothing to go on for a trail. A zillion zebra tracks don't allow you to figure out which one you're actually tracking. Or did it peel off from the group and die behind you, while you're following the herd?

Even if you see the herd, which one to you shoot again with a follow up shot? Feel lucky? shoot one now that has no other hole and you pay for two!

It's not NA with the majortiy of single animals alone to be shot. These are herd animals that run and stampeed out much of the evidence. Oh well, I've beaten this to death now. If it's not clear by now then my powers of articulation have failed me once again!

gmsemel,
I started typing this then realized that I may have misunderstood your post. Did you mean shooting alot from the bench or away from the bench?
I'm convinced that bench shooting has ruined more people for field shooting than anything else. People train thier sub-conscious to only press the trigger when a rifle is motionless. When they are in field positions they have trouble pulling the trigger. I believe that a good enough hit, taken fast will kill more game than a perfect shot that took too long. Learning to shoot off-hand makes every other position easier.

What I meant was get off the bench and shoot off hand and with shooting sticks and from what ever field rests you can find. I think of what to say and sometimes it dose not translate to my fingers and typing as well. After all I am old and my birthday is tomarrow.

I have been somewhat of a 30 caliber snob. I have changed my views but my thoughts ran to the 7mm's and if I needed more I would skip over the 30's and go to the 338 or 35's. I thought if the 284 to 308 was not a big enough difference. I know that I was wrong in skipping the 30's as they are good performers. But if I am looking at a Zebra or Eland through a scope my mind feels better if a 338 or 375 is in the chamber. The long flight and the trophy fees keep me "thinking" I need more. Anyway I need an excuse for owning my 375's.

Not a given, but an alternative way to think about this. Don't think of it so much as a 20% bigger hole....think of it as 20% more damage.....20% more arteries cut....20% more tissue damage....20% wider area for blood to flow from....etc.. Again, not a given, but a change of perspective.

JJ,

One thing you are forgetting is the bullet's expansion.

And that will make a big difference on exit wounds. if you get a premium bullet expands 100% of the calibre size and we compare a .284 compared to a .30 and the bullets both expand 100% to twice the bullet diameter. then we end up with a bullet wound of .568 for the .284 and .60 for .30 caliber not too much difference but it started at roughly a 1/4 inch entrance wound and exited as a 1/2 inch wound.

gmsemel,
Then it appears that we agree. Happy birthday, one day early.

Mpumelelo, again your simply looking at the difference in Diameter, do the math and see the difference in surface area of the bullet, it's a huge difference.

The other major flaw in that theory is expecting or depending upon an exit hole. Forget the exit hole, and the entry is simply all you have to work with. In that case a 20% bigger hole is significant..........Again I'm starting to type all the same stuff over and over. If this is unclear then I have no greater typing skill or mastery of the English language to express my thoughts on this.

I agree with JJ on this, in that there seem to be "sweet spots" in the caliber lineup. A lot of it depends on bullet construction, behavior,and impact velocity, but I have noticed more damage from 300 magnums than from anything in the 7mm/270 class(although really GREAT bullets close the gap a bit). Like wise I have not seen a great difference beyond the 300 cal magnums until you hit 375 in bore size, which seems to me to be where wound channels really start to get large...IMHO the difference seems noticeable in these categories...

A lot of what's been said here I simply don't agree with.

I call it "solid mentality" and a fair number of Africans still subscribe to it. It goes back to the days when soft-point expanding bullets simply weren't reliable, and the only way to really ensure reliable performance and to increase killing power was to go with solid bullets. And the bigger and wider the solid was, the better it hammered stuff.

But for the life of me, I have never seen that small differences in frontal area with soft-point bullets have any meaningful effect whatsoever on either the wound channel or killing power. Once a soft point of quality construction hits an animal and gets inside, frontal area just doesn't mean all that much anymore, and that's all the more so if major bones are hit, resulting in secondary projectiles, etc.

I can't tell you how many dead elk, for example, that I've bent over and dissected that were killed with everything from the 270 Win. to the 375 H&H, and - I hate to step on the cake and wreck the party here - but based on what I've seen in almost all cases it would be very difficult to tell which cartridge and bullet was used to do the killing if you went by tissue destruction and wound channel alone. That is, IF the bullet performed according to script without either coming apart prematurely or else act like a solid and pencil through.


AD

Allen:I could not look at a wound and tell you what made it either. But I've seen enough wound channels myself,and have noticed a difference in general destructiveness between a,say 300 mag and anything smaller,one reason they "kill" large game well, as you've noted.IME it takes a quantume leap in bullet diameter to accomplish it.I've just noticed more damage from 300 mags than anything smaller.

The times I've used a 375(which in comparison to your experience are fewer), I've noticed a LOT of destruction, pieces of clock work all over the place,and lots of blood.

I know you have used Nosler partitions a great deal,which generally lose the nose sections,and have a smaller frontal area after expansion;one reason they penetrate very well.The Bitterroot's I've used expand to a larger frontal area, and hold it,generally to the off-side; and they seem to create a somewhat larger wound area(do more damage?) along their path than the partitions.Just my general observations.Both do a swell job in their own way. As you know, I use both...

Bob, I've noticed that when you get to the various 300 magnums firing good 180 gr. bullets out at 3000 fps. or better that the kills start getting more sudden, more sure, and more dramatic than with any of the lesser cartridges.

I'll get shrilled at and likely turpentined for this politically-incorrect observation, but I've seen very little difference in killing power between the 300 Win., 338 Win., and 375 H&H on critters ranging from impala thru eland, and from deer to elk and bears.

Guys head to Africa, and they think everything from dik dik to eland is so super-tough that they need a minimum 375 H&H to iron-out the whole shooting-match. That somehow that 375 is going to pick everything up, give it an airplane-spin followed by a thunderous bodyslam, and fountains of gore will then go shooting out from port to starboard, but in contrast that lowly 180 gr. bullet out of a 300 is somehow, someway going to bounce off or otherwise fail to kill well. As far as I'm concerned, this is the worst sort of nonsense, and most guys would be better off going with that familiar elk rifle they use at home, at least for plainsgame-only (no resident lions or buffalo) safaris. Animal biology in Africa is no different than animal biology anywhere else, and romantic notions to the contrary be dipped.

BULLETS have more to do with good kills than the exact caliber itself. I've shot various plainsgame animals (warthog thru zebra) with tough solids out of the 416 Rem. Mag. as well as the 458 Win. Mag., and in every case the kills were poor and very poor - not as quick or dramatic as something like a 180 Nosler out of a 300 Win. The initial frontal-area of those solids was certainly bigger than that of the 180 Nosler, but that's where the comparison ended.

AD

You know I absolutely agree that I would have little chance at guessing the correct caliber or bullet used from seeing a big bloody wound on a big game animal.

Unless you get to a scientific level it would be difficult to know or make an educated guess from the outside of the animal. Once opened up things get easier because impact velocity makes the internal damage more obvious.

With that said, it's never the game that has a huge bloody wound that is in question, it's those that have a simple bore diameter entry and/or exit that are the concern. These are very common as well in Africa.

The conversation reminds me somwhat of a comparison about choosing and debating optics. Under good conditions a 200 dollar pair of field glasses don't seem that much different then a 1200 dollar pair. But when it's dark or there is some glare is when the differnece is clear.

Much the same for the choice of bore diameter. When everything works well, there is never any question. It's even less of a question when the shooter is experienced and confident.

It's more a concern when things don't go well, and maybe the shooter has a touch of nerves as the gun fires. It's the less then perfect conditions, again quite common, that are the concern of the PH and outfitters. Remember that these folks, myself included see a large cross section of people. Not just ourselves and our equally skilled friends.

There is also that part about losing game and seeing the coincidence between bore diameter and lost animals.

Allen: Someone(famous) once said(paraphrased), that anything you can't knock off with a 300 mag would be pretty tough to knock off with anything....

Just did the math.

Relative to a .308:

The .257 area is 31% less.

The .277 is 19% less.

The .284 is 15% less.

The .338 is 20% more.

The .375 is 46% more.

The .257,, .277, .284 and of course the .264 are all closer together than the difference between the .277 and .308. The differences from .308 to .338 and .338 to .375 are quite large.

How come the Swedish moose study showed no difference in killing power between the 6.5mm and the .375? Perhaps the Swedes are talking about killing, whereas J.J. Hack is talking about tracking wounded animals. Moose are not herd animals and, if hunted when there is snow on the ground, would be a lot easier to track with or without any blood.

Erudite discussion so I can't offer much on the theoretical aspects of the topic, just specific experience seeing a 270WSM perform on an RSA plains hunt in July 2006. My son shot his Kimber 270WSM with handloaded 140 TSXs at ~3200. 7 animals (springbok, blesbok, impala, harteebest, black wildebeest, zebra, gemsbok) with 9 shots (the gemsbok and hartebeest were shot while moving). All pass throughs, no bullet recovered, only the gemsbok required tracking due to a shot too far back, dropped with a second shot in the shoulder. I shot a 300WSM (180 Nosler Partition PP at ~3050) on substantially similar animals . I recovered 1 bullet (under off side hide of an eland at 170 yds). I noted no difference in performance between the 2 calibers. The determinant variable seemed to be his shot placement and cool head while on the trigger. An old story repeated it seems.