Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game 270 Winchester

I know.

The 270 is flat out the killingest cartridge that any rifle has ever been chambered for. How do I know this? Well I bought one last summer and it has accounted for 2 blacktail bucks and 2 coyotes with 5 rounds (i missed the first shot on 1 of the coyotes). 75% of the animals were DRT (1 buck ran about 40 yards) so based on this extensive empirical data, the 270 has no equal.
I have had deer and coyotes shot with an -06 and 375H&H as well as several other calibers take more than 1 shot (don't get me started on cape buffalo) so the evidence proves that nothing kills like a 270.
I've made up my mind so don't try to confuse me with facts.

After she'd hunted a few years, one of my wife's hunting ambitions was to take two pronghorns out of the same bunch. Got her chance one day when we stalked a herd to within about 300 yards, in a little basin. There wasn't a big buck in the bunch and she didn't care much about that anyway by then, so picked out the biggest doe and shot it with her Ultra Light Arms .270.

It dropped and, probably due to the sound bouncing back and forth in the basin, the rest of them ran angling toward us for a couple hundred yards before slowing up and starting to look around for the old doe. Eventually another doe stood broadside and Eileen shot it too. When it dropped a cottontail rabbit bounced out of the sagebrush about 50 yards away, then stopped to look around. She took it's head off with the .270, but afterward decided that it was "too much gun" (as John Wayne said about Glen Campbell Sharps-killed turkey in TRUE GRIT), because even though it the bullet went into the left eye, the bunny's "front shoulders" were bloodshot.

That's the only time she expressed dissatisfaction with the .270 in all the years she used one....

Blacktailer....Amen bro!

I don't want to hear any facts either...

I wish I had that kind of luck with mine. Cause I really like my finnlight.

Dink

Dink I don't know what to tell you....

Ho-Hum!

Here's a big, mature cow taken last weekend with a .270 Win and some random factory load. Range was roughly 300 yards. She made it maybe 10 yards and fell over dead. No fuss, no drama.

Someone has to say it: It's not luck.

If she would have been using better bullets, it wouldn't have done so much damage to the bunny...

I am willing to listen to answers.

I shoot weekly from April through November up to 600 yards. I have run partition, Accubonds,TTSX's and BT.

I can not make it kill like a 30-06.

Dink

Do you have an explanation for its overwhelming inferiority or is this simply your own personal observations and assumptions?

You're right, it's karma.

And karma can be a bitch if you let it.

I really don't know what to tell you. I shot an '06 as my only rifle for the first 20 or so years that I hunted big game. Since then I have messed around with a lot of different stuff, but have shot .270s, .280s (both the Remington and AI versions) and (occasionally) my old '06 more than anything else. I'll be damned if I can tell any difference in "killing power". For me, the .270, in rifles that fit me and shoot accurately, is just what works best for me.

I will readily admit that I don't shoot animals out to 600 yards. My longest kills, mostly on pronghorns, have been not much over 300 yards. Most of the Coues whitetails that I have shot (critters that supposedly require sniper rifles and scopes) were taken at less than 100 yards--same with desert mule deer. If I had never bought anything other than the old pre-64 .30-06 Model 70 that still resides in my safe, I think that my results would have been about the same--but I wouldn't have had as much fun as I have had trying other things.

My personal observations.

I agree with everyone that says it's the same as a 30-06, 280, etc. but for me I it has not been.

Take the buck I killed this year. I shot him quartering toward me at 94 yards. I was shooting off bog-pod. Barnes 130 grain TTSX in front of 60.0 grains H4831, sparked by 210M. Velocity right at 3000 fps. Bullet broke his right front shoulder, through the length of his body and lodged against the bone in left rear quarter. The deer ran 90-100 yards never leaving a drop of blood I could find and searched the trail back and forth twice.

I have shot deer with exact shot placement with a 30-06 and never took a step.

I have shot other deer that were the same way, little to no blood trail, shots that should have made them hit the ground they just take off running.

I really think it's just unlucky for me.

Dink

I have a friend that's only used the 270 and 22-250 on game. He says just the opposite and thinks the 270 works better than the 30-06 in terms of DRT's.. Go figure I guess..

I have not shot game at 600 yards. The farthest I have shot with the 270 win is 253 yards.

I know a lot of people that say it's the same as the rest of the cartridges you mentioned. I have either been really lucky with the 30-06 or really unlucky with 270 win.

Dink

Best thing about a .270 is being able to neck the cases down for my .25-06.

My experiences are similar to mudhen's...and distances about the same although I have here and there stretched a 270 a bit further.

Recent kills include a couple of big bodied mule deer;one hit broadside through the lungs at 340 yards with a 130 Bitterroot,a pretty tough bullet(lazered after the fact). He staggered downhill for about 10 yards and I hit him a second time on the point of the shoulder quartering on and he was down as the rifle recoiled.

The second was a crossing shot off hand at about 80 yards with a 130 NPT;as the rifle recoiled I can still see his head snap down between his legs as he tumbled out of sight over the lip of a canyon. He was dead when I got to him.

These sorts of things have repeated themselves over and over again for me with monotonous regularity.

As to the 30 calibers,they are no doubt great game killers and I have used them a lot. But I recall a heavy old Saskatchewan buck (as a single example)hit at 350 yards across a grain field that took two successive chest hits through the ribs and still managed 80 yards or so along the field edge before he tumbled.In the snow where he was hit, there were chunks of whitetail clockwork scattered everywhere....yet on he went. Made me wonder how he took a single step after each hit.

So this "thing" with animals sometimes covering distance after a hit can happen with anything you can fire from the shoulder and is not at all unusual,no matter what you shoot.