Hi Everyone

Here in North East Tennessee I heard a lot of complaining about the cost of the short, fat cartridges. Later I would ask about the new rifles and it seems that most of them were traded for older calibers and CHEAPER AMMO. There were lots of complaints about recoil being heavy.

Guys let me know about your ideas on the short, fat rounds.

roanmtn

Not a gun writer but I really enjoy my older Winchester Classic 70 FWT in 270 WSM but do not enjoy finding brass. I only see factory ammo for sale on rare occasion but haven’t ever bought any.

As far as effectiveness it’s nice to boost a 150gr bullet at the same velocity as a 270 Win does a 130gr. But really the game probably can’t tell the difference - it’s just something fun to play with.

I don’t have any other ‘short fat’ cartridges mostly the old standards.

A lot of folks got caught up on the short mag wave 10 -15 yrs ago realized that their old 270 or 30-06 will really do just as well for the type of hunting they do so a lot of those WSMs went down the road. In fact many of the current new offerings are on the opposite end of magnums being smaller and a bit slower but more fun to shoot and efficient. The 6.5CM is a perfect example of this.

I think as hunters age, they start to drift away from big magnums with the cost and recoil. 10 yrs ago I took a 375magnum on a guided moose hunt. Last year it was a 275Rigby. That little 7mm worked fine.

I have a 270 and a 300 WSM. I don’t think either one have much recoil. I have a couple hundred cases for each one. I haven’t purchased a factory round in 45 years.

Good rounds, but not magical. Of course they kick more.

Who buys a rifle without checking out the cost and availability of ammunition for it?

Just a random sample, but in the last couple of months some of the only factory hunting ammo I have seen on shelves in eastern NC has been 300, 7mm and 270 WSM and the 243 WSSM. I guess it is because not a lot of those rifles sold here and the gun dealers have been sitting on low demand ammo. If I owned a rifle chambered in one of those cartridges, I would lay in a good supply of ammo, brass and buy a set of dies. In the future they will be harder to find. Look at older, short-term darlings like the 225 WIN, 284 WIN, etc. - not on the shelves or in mail order catalogs now. As to SuperCub's point, I have also divested myself of the 300 WIN MAG, 338 WIN MAG, and 458 WIN MAG rifles I once owned. I hunt with mid-range cartridges now (270 WIN, 308 WIN, 30-06 SPRG) but recently acquired a 243 WIN, my first one in 18 years, because the recoil is more cervical vertebrae friendly and nowadays that is a real consideration.

Well, my short magnum is the 350 RemMag. The ammo situation for that went to hell years ago, and ranges between nonexistent to ridiculously expensive, but I'm keeping it for awhile longer. I don't use it very often, have enough ammo on hand for my needs, and I just like it.

I won a Tikka .270 WSM at an RMEF banquet several years ago and sold it to a Montana mule deer hunter who was excited to have it for $700. I never fired it even though ammo was available then. I just didn’t want to add .277 bullets to reloading inventory.

My 7mm WSM is a 1/2 - 3/4 inch rifle with 150 TTSX and IMR-4350. I'm a Lefty and always drooled over the Featherweight Classics, but never could find one in a LH action. When this one popped up on Gunbroker I snagged it. It was new and it's never had a factory round thru it. I bought 150 cases and load for it. I've never seen a box of ammo in a store. I do prefer how long actions feed and extract though over the WSM action.

Not a gun writer...I've had a 270 WSM for around 13 years . I bought about 100 pieces of brass 10 years ago and haven't even touched them yet. I've been loading the same 3 boxes of factory rounds that I bought when I got the rifle. They've all been loaded plenty of times during load development and the brass seems to last quite awhile. I shoot 2 or three rounds to check zero and maybe one or two rounds at deer. It's not a target rifle getting shot constantly.

Consistently accurate though.

Dan

I have a 270WSM and 300 WSM.They fall in-between a 300WM and a 270 Weatherby.Both shoot great and not much kick.I have plenty brass and it lasts a long time.

Truth

Truth

Im a fan of 308 win and 30-30. If i lived in NE Tennessee i would probably just use a 30-30 and be happy. Before Covid ammo for it was very cheap.

But i dont live in the same location as the OP and live on the Idaho/Montana border. Despite my 30-30 and 308win appreciation i got into my Ruger compact 338RCM rifle a few years back and its my favorite hunting rifle. Part od my affection for the 338RCM has to do with the cartridge and the other half is the rifle it comes in. The rifle has a short action and 20" barrel with iron sights. Its compact enough and light enough but not abusive in recoil. It knocks elk hard but then again i had no issue before with the 308win and took some bigg critters with the measley 30 cal back in the day. Still i like the upgrade in performance with my short and fatter 338.

A guy can find 300 SAUM pretty regular or brass by Nosler and Hornady but finding 7 MM SAUM is a sob. It shoots great and not to bad of recoil in the M7 ss platform with a R3 recoil pad. A compact nice handling outfit that packs a punch. Factory ammo is $50 for Remington and $70 for Nosler. It dosen't do anything better than any of my 270's for the extra cost of the ammo. You can only blow smoke up the public's ass on these gimmick cartridges so long and word gets around that they aren't a whole lot better than normal stuff and the demand dies. Way I see it. Mb

Having been bit by the magnumitis bug in the early 2000's, I have many of the belted and short magnums. They all shoot accurately and work as intended, but I have found that the older, more common calibers do the same with less powder, cost, and recoil. As for cost, reloading is the answer, especially if you're a loony. Im also not a writer, as one can tell.

I have most calibers that go bang. I am to the point now that the only gun I carry for hunting is my 270 WSM. I handload and am stocked until I die and probably my kids are gone.

I’ll throw in another factor: people don’t always tell the truth. They may SAY that they are selling a rifle because the ammo is expensive, because that’s a “good” reason. They may even convince themselves that is the reason, when the real reason is that they don’t like the muzzle blast, the recoil, and they don’t shoot it well.

I have a 270 WSM that has been my go to rifle for about 15 years or so. It doesn’t do much that a regular 270 won’t but I like the short action, it is accurate and I have faith that when I decide to pull the trigger whatever is in the crosshairs will die quickly and efficiently. I have enough factory ammo and reloading components to get me through a couple lifetimes of hunting. I’ve started selling off my other guns because the wizzum relegates them all to the safe anyway.

I like the 7mm SAUM 'cause it is the short action equivalent of the 280AI and likewise I like the 25 WSSM because it is the super short action equivalent of the 257AI.

There isn't much factory ammo on dealers' shelves around Omaha, but I did see a pallet jack full of Winchester/Olin ammo at a local Wal-Mart this morning. No limit of the number of boxes of ammo and the prices are the same as they were five or six months ago.

I agree 26Remguy. A friend purchased 100 new empty brass cases years ago and has never had problems with ammo. He s still using 50 of the cases and 50 are still unfired. He uses the .270 WSM just enough to annually sight in and one or two cartridges for his every year deer. I have never seen a lot of ammo available for the WSM's here in North East Tennessee. I'm glad I have stayed with the .270 Win., 9.3 x 62, 30-06 and the 6.5 x 55. No problems with ammo as I reload. I've never killed anything with a factory load. The 6.5 x 55 has been my varmint rifle for many years with the 100 gr. Sierra bullet. The jacket is hard and I've seen a lot of groundhogs flop around and then get up and get into their hole...NEVER,EVER to be seen again.
However, the Hornady bullets explode the little fellows. Hornady's do not shoot very well in my 6.5 x 55.

roanmtn

I agree 100%. I have a photo album full of deer and other critters shot here and in Africa. The .270 Win. did well from 40-350 yards.

roanmtn

I have a Rem 700 300 SAUM, and a Ruger M77 MkII 7 SAUM....purchased at least 300 pieces of brass for each and can't remember when I last shot a factory round in either. The only other rifle I had at the time was a 308 Win, and the SAUMs were the reason I started reloading....and tinkering with stocks, and bedding, and chronos, and powders.......

So if you are going short mag, you really should be reloading.

Well crap if I didn't buy guns and components I 'd probably spend the money on good liquor , bad women, eating out, and rubber dogsh*t from wallyworld. I never heard of anyone getting rich from passbook savings acct. Hell I drive a toyota tacoma and am seen occasionally in a F-150 so that I can look like part of the affluent society. No one really ever had to many guns or ammo and right now it's at its highest value monetarily. Mb

Does the 270 WSM have the same "Campfire" issues that the 270 does? Asking for a friend..............

Good one!

I have had two 270 WSMs. One shoots very well, the other only so-so. The good shooter I got for a crazy good price used, scoped, with forty tuned handloads using Bergers. I used it one day to kill a good WT buck I surprised (and he surprised me too!) in a dry sagebrush draw. Then the next morning shot a pronghorn in the same place. I haven't had any trouble finding new brass... got my latest bag primed a month ago.

I hunt with both a 270 and 270wsm in Tikka flavor. The wsm is the one I find myself reaching for most of the time (my 7STW, 30-06, 300wby, and 308 just don’t get used as much any more). I do hunt with the 270win and 35 Whelen every year....but not as much. I shoot all of them every year before deer season to make sure their gtg. Because I hunt exclusively with hand loads (unless I’m shooting my 300 or 340wby), ammo availability isn’t an issue for my lifetime. It would take deep contemplation to understand the reasoning. For me, I’m happy with the short fat cases. In fact, a commercialized 6.5wsm would quickly find a home.

I'd say I don't have time for short fat rounds, but I have two 350 RM's. I'd rather they be Whelens to tell you the truth.

I have considerable hunting experience with the .270 WSM, 7mm SAUM and .300 WSM. They all worked fine in the rifles I've owned or tested, including two .270 WSMs and 3-4 .300 WSMs, but the short mag I've hunted with most was the 7mm SAUM. used it for several years on hunts from Texas to Quebec. All proved to be very accurate, but I dunno if that had as much to do with cartridge design as the rifles. In general, even factory rifles had already started becoming noticeably more accurate by the time the short mags appeared. Have owned several..300 Winchester Magnums that were at least as accurate as my .300 WSMs.

Dunno whether they kill better than "standard" rounds either, but then after decades of hunting and hundreds of animals have seen far less difference in killing power between various cartridges than I thought there was way back--when a single example tended to slant my impressions considerably, just as it does with a lot of hunters with relatively few examples.

Also never found a great difference in how the short-action aspect helped or hindered my hunting. Short versions of any bolt action save 3-4 ounces of weight, which can easily be offset by barrel contour or stock weight. Never had any problem "running" any long action fast, including a CZ 550 .416 Rigby. In fact, may have run it faster than any other in a hunting situation or two, due to adrenalin.

The other thing that happened since both the WSMs and SAUMs appeared is an improvement in bullets, in two ways. Even better monolithics appeared, including the TSX in its various versions, which tend to reduce the "advantages" of a little extra short-mag velocity, along with higher-BC bullets.

Do still have a Winchester .223 WSSM as well, but it required rebarreling before it would shoot accurately. It's a good cartridge, with a real velocity advantage over the .22-250 and .220 Swift, but would have been a lot better with a sharper shoulder and longer neck--and of course rifles with faster-twist barrels.

John excellent analysis - thanks.

Hi hanco

I have never killed any game with factory loads. However, I have shot a lot of factory ammo helping people zero their rifles and even convinced a few of them to become handloaders. By the way, my public gun range was Outdoor Life's gun range as Jim Carmichael lives somewhere in Johnson City, TN my home town. I am acquainted with Jim only and can say hello when we cross paths over the years. Like Mule Deer, he has vast experience that I will never be able to have. Anyhow, I've never shot one critter with factory loads Except killing hogs at slaughter time on Thanksgiving Days with .22 longs from a old single shot bolt action Remington fifty years ago.

Short Fat Magnums may be like fat girls and mopeds. Lots of fun, but you wouldn’t want your friends to see you!

Wellll...What issues are you referring to . I've always had good luck with the .270 Win. I just come onto the 24hrcampfire once in awhile.

Hi Mule Deer

Great comments from a bushel of vast experience. When it comes to recoil, I am a world class wuss! How do you spell this word? This is why I used the 9.3 x 62 for my once in a lifetime hunt in Africa. I can't afford any more. It does not kick as bad as the 275 H & H.I helped a friend zero his .275. It hurt so bad we both had to go pee before it was anywhere near zeroed. It had a metal buttplate and was brutal.