Speaking of the 270, a friend of mine has one that he says wont shoot a 130 OR a 150.

According to my friend, the guy he got it from said it really likes a 180 gr bullet.

Anyone know of a 270 bullet available in 180 gr?

I also wonder if maybe he wasn't talking about a 180 in 7mm that was sized down somehow. Anyone ever hear about that?

It has me stymied.

Some years ago a client invited a group of us, his suppliers, on a Texas Desert Mule Deer hunt on a new ranch had bought. The ranch was 65 sections under a high fence near Van Horn. Long story short, I wound up with a competitor buddy in the back of a pickup truck bed being eased along a trail? of a ranch road. I wound up shooting backup on a big (for the Texas version of the Sonoran Desert) buck that spooked out of an arroyo we had just crossed. My SAKO 270 was shooting some very hot (59 grs of IMR4831!!) 130 gr Nosler BT's and I caught the buck just to the right of the left hip joint going away from us at a down angle at about 75 yards. The shot broke his back and blew up both lungs. The bullet vaporized eveything in between both ends of his carcass. And the very aged 10 point gentleman now resides on my wall over this computer. I've made lots of astounding game shots with a 270 and it is and will be my go to rifle until I can't see to shoot anymore.
Ron

I started reading Jack O'Connor books as a kid and bought mine about 18 years ago and haven't used anything else other than a wacky stint with a double rifle drilling, so I can't make any comparisons. Its a Rem. ADL, stock nicely banged up everywhere, with a Weaver K4 with lots of the blueing rubbed off. I try not to be stupid with long range shooting, but its done amazing things to antelope a few times beyond 400 yards and dropped some very big bodied whities and mulies with one shot at all ranges. In all this time its only shot 130gr Rem CorLock bullets, first factory now hand loads.

IMHO, almost anything from a .243 on up with proper placement will do all of the above. I just like the way the 270 doesn't kick and acts like a 7 mag.

Stupid huh? No Experience? I've only killed a couple hundred whitetail and have seen about that many shot. Like I said the .270 with a 130 grain bullet is fine for open country hunting where you can see the animal drop on a well placed shot. Where I hunt in the South Texas brush country it performs quite poorly. I'm not saying it won't kill a deer it just doesn't penetrate completely on a consistent basis. It does a lot better with a 150 grain bullet but most people use the 130 grain. I like a bullet that causes a leak. When a deer runs 100 yards in the country I hunt without leaving a blood trail they are very hard to find due to the dense brush. I prefer a 7mm or 30 caliber with a medium weight for caliber premium bullet. Most people who started hunting this country began with a .270 and have since switched. I guess they are stupid too. If a .270 works for you that's great. Keep your nose up Jack O'conner's ass.

M16,

Interesting. Not doubting you at all since we all have different experiences, but I've lost count of the number of PA whitetails I've either taken or seen taken w/ a .270 & either a 130 or 140 grain bullet and have had no penetration problems whatsoever, even on very steep quartering shots. I have seen 130 noslers go in the front and come out the back of large deer on 2 separate occassions. In the vast majority of the cases, it was bang-flop. Generally, PA deer are a good bit larger than TX deer as well and PA laurel & crab apples aren't too shabby when compared to TX mesquite. The only long tracking jobs (2 at 100+ yards) I've seen on well hit deer (i.e. through the lungs) was the .30-06/180 grain combo, so your experience is exactly the opposite of mine. I didn't blame it on the round, just the bullet was a little tough for the job. I live in Dallas now and just about everybody I know who hunts down here, if nothing else, considers the .270 overkill for deer. What type of 130 grain .270 bullets were you having penetration problems with?

Thanks,

Lou

There are two newer factory .270 loads that take it to a higher level, that is, if they chronograph the advertised speeds, the Hornady Light Magnum, 130 grains at 3215 FS and the Federal High Energy 140 grains at 3090 FS. These are 3000 foot pound energy loads. I use the latter load in a 26" barrel Ultra Light. Should be as good as any .264.

Couple of hundred? How many with a .270? I've shot a few, and never had one WITHOUT an exit wound. This is with 130 grain bullets, and larger Kansas and Colorado deer.

The .270 Win works just fine in our northeast clearcuts with 130-140 grain bullets. Close or long doesn't matter if the shot placement is right with a good bullet. We like to break them down on the spot, but if we need to track it must be a good blood trail in a clearcut. The .257s, .284s, and .308s do a fine job also with good shot placement and a bullet that will perform.

Um, guys, what's the problem here? If I may paraphrase (and please correct me if I get it wrong):



The .270 with a 130 grain bullet is a fine open country deer round. One deer was lost in brushy country where the deer cannot be seen a long way off due to no exit wound, therefore no good blood trail. A 150 grain bullet would have been better.



So far so good � what�s incorrect about that? That only says one thing about one particular instance with one deer and one shot presentation and placement in which the use of a 130 grain bullet was apparently unsuitable. I don't see anything about the suitability of using a bullet of similar sectional density but with a heavier weight. IIRC a 200 grain .338 bullet has a near enough SD as well.



The .270 used with a bullet unsuited to the situation at hand did not provide satisfactory results, so the the .270 itself is no good for my particular hunting situation?



The "my particular hunting situation" part I can agree with, at least if one uses a 130 grain bullet instead of a 150 or 160 grain Nosler, but I seem to detect a disliking of the .270 in general just because it was once used with an improper bullet for the task at hand.



Is that correct or am I missing something here?

What amazes me is folks that shoot the wrong bullet for the job at hand and then blame it on the caliber...or the folks that blame bullet, caliber or about anything else that comes to mind when actually bad shooting was the culprit....

I have shot at least 600 or more animals (mostly springbuck and Blesbuck on cull)and off these perhaps 175 were heart/lung shots with the .270 and 130 gr. bullets and 99 percent of those shots were pass throughs, mostly I used the 130 gr. Noslers, but a lot of Sierras, Hornadys, Speer and Corelokts...I shot quite a few elk with the corelokts and they worked..

For bush hunting the 160 gr. Nosler and the old 170 Speer worked fine or the Rem. Corelokt of yesterday that ran at about 2600 FPS...all will pass through...

It doesn't take much to make a bush caliber out of a 270, just a little knowledge and you have a 7x57 in effect. A 160 gr. bullet at 2500 FPS is an excellent brush round.

Jim that pretty well sums it up in a nutshell except it didn't happen with just one deer. It happened numerous times. That's when people I hunt with started going with heavier calibers and heavier bullets. Most problems happened with quartering lung shots that failed to penetrate the offside shoulder. The bullet would wind up under the skin. Too much velocity with too light a bullet. Not enough penetration. The old 30-30 and 7X57 are still excellent rounds for this purpose. Big slow moving bullets cause leaks.

I have shot quite a few Texas deer and find the lack of a large exit wound using 130 grain bullets unusual to say the least! Also you don't have to have an exit to get a blood trail as a deer will lose blood thru it's mouth and nose on a lot of hits. It would seem to me M16 that a lot of this shooting didn't provide entrance wounds either. As to you taking "a couple Hundred deer" you aren't supposed to count the ones you killed at night with a Q-Beam. At the rate of five legal deer a year you'd have to put 40 years of hunting behind you to get 200 deer and I seriously don't believe your over 50 years old. I did use a load that killed like lightning in my 270 that didn't exit often, it was the 110 grain Sierra pushed as fast as possible with 4064, this load seemed to make em swell up but no exit and no trailing either.

Rick, your firearms knowledge is about like your knowledge of Texas game laws. Go to the Parks and Wildlife webpage and inform yourself about the managed lands permits. Next time be informed before you make a fool of yourself and make false statements.

Well I didn't want to do it but here goes ... I know M16 and have hunted with and there's no doubt in my mind that he's done what he says he's done. I've also hunted with Ray and ditto to his stated experience.I don't care much for these 270 arguments much because my personal experience with the 270 is hit and miss in regard to bullet profomance. I shot or seen shot dozens upon dozens of deer( and yes I am old enough to say 100's) with everything imaginable and that's why I'm a 308/30-06 fan for deer. I've seen many deer slain with 270's but I will side with M16 on this one in that I've seen damn few shot through with 130 and even some 150's. I do own a fine pre 64 270 but to be perfectly candid about it I like it best for small deer (Coues), antelope, and especially varmits.

Personal preference I suppose. I personally adore my .270 Win because it has worked well for me over the years. I shoot it almost exclusively with 150 grs bullets, so I can't really comment on the .270/130 grs issue. But there was a time whan I thought a .277 bullet was a tad small, and during those years I happily shot .284 and .308 caliber guns. I suppose it comes down to what one gets used to and what one observes to work. When I first switched to the .270 I was convinced that my exit wounds were smaller. Having shot the .270 for so long now, I'm not sure, maybe I just got used to what the .270 delivers?? One thing is for sure, regardless what caliber and what bullet you shoot, there will always be (the odd) case of not getting an exit wound. I have experienced that with all calibers, I think (?)
- mike

I think it's more like personal prejudice than personal preference . .270 nay-sayers just seem to have a problem with how well the .270 performs despite not shooting heavy bullets and how loyal .270 fans. I just can't help think a lot of the stuff gets made up just to prove a point since a lot of it goes so far against my own personal experience. Maybe there really are some critters out there that get the "impervious to .270, but not 7mm" gene, but I doubt it.

Probably the most amazing thing about the .270 how popular it remains since 1925; consistently ranking as the #2 selling big game gun going and and keeping in mind that just about every new round is designed to slightly better .270 performance in some way or another or offer .270 performance in a different package. Some guys will say it's a result of Jack O'Connors, but he's been gone for 30 years and the .270 has not waivered. The .270 works extremely well, plain and simple.

-Lou

Considering I have gotten complete penetration on our small Texas whitetails (150 pounds is huge) with 60 grain bullets from a 223 and 22-250, 85 and 87 grain bullets from a 6MM Rem. I can't see how anyone with any experience with the 270 at all would doubt it's ability to penetrate 14-16 inches of chest cavity of a relativly soft animal. I have used the Speer Hotcor, Hornady's interlok and winchester's Power point to take a good number of whitetails and mule deer and the lack of an exit is surely the exception rather than the rule. I have used these bullets on elk also and they usually end up under the hide on the far side. As far as claiming what I have killed under the mlp program like I said don't try to count what you shot in the glare of a Q-Beam. My one time experience of Culling or killing wholesale for the pursuit of growing deer with a few more inches of horn is nothing to be proud of. I worked a ranch that had built it's high fences and wanted every native deer killed on the place so the landowner could start raising some Super deer from Michigan. I used an AR15 with a 16 inch barrel and mostly 60 grain hornady Hollow points loaded to 2900 fps. These bullets often exited. I also used some Vietnam era 55 grain FMJ military ammo and interestingly this bullet tended to break up but still killed well. I don't consider this type of shooting comparable to average hunting.

Rick, allow me to educate you a little. You stated in an earlier post that it you could legally kill only five whitetail per year in Texas. That is plain wrong. Under the managed lands permits you can kill 500 if you have the permits. I don't know where you come up with the spotlighting q-beam bullshit. Maybe thats the way you hunt but I don't. I posted what was my experience in the brush county of South Texas. You talk about 150 pound deer. Well it just so happens that I got just back from culling some management bucks that field dressed an average of 180 pounds. Live weight would go around 220. With the rut starting body weights are already starting to drop. Quite a bit of difference in the type of deer you are talking about. I took seven deer over the last four days.......all legal. Ever hear of five extra bonus tags allowed per person? Did you know you can use someone else's bonus tags. Did you know that you can buy a $300.00 permit and shoot all the does and spikes you have permits for. Learn the laws of the state you hunt in and enlighten (not with a q-beam) yourself.

Rest assured that you 180 plus pound deer is not common in most of Texas. In general the need to kill more than 2 or three deer is not that common either. Excluding MLD and LAMPS permits the statewide limit is 5 deer. You used the word management buck and culling, pursuit of the horn again I see. Both MLD and Lamps permits are sold to landowners and there is a limit on them as to the acreage and even need as to the number of deer that can be killed unless even more bucks are spent(Texas loves money). My interest in slaughtering large numbers of deer has long subsided but I am sure you sweat it out when you see the game warden coming. The situation you picture is certainly not a common one and south Texas is more the hunting ground for the well off rather than the rest of us.

Rick, you are a funny guy. Why would I sweat when the game warden is coming. If you got the permit it's all legal. I see you are now educated to the laws of the state and don't need to call me an outlaw or an illegal hunter. You have been proven wrong. Do I detect a little envy when you say South Texas is more the hunting ground for the well off then for the rest of us. I would suggest you become "well off"

Ray, you hit the nail on the head! Bullet selection is alot more important than cartridge now a days. I also love the fact that you stated the corelok took alot of Elk. I reload primarily for my rifles, but I dont reload for my youngest son's Sako lever action 243 win. I have him shooting, yep, the Remington 100 grain Corelok, it get's the job done and allows him to do alot of practice shooting, because the ammo doesnt cost an arm and a leg. I always thought the corelok was a much better bullet than most were willing to give it credit for. A Box of 243 win corelok factory ammo is 13-15 dollars per box, if I purchased partitions for him, the cost goes to 24 to 25 dollars per box. I dont want to load for that lever of his, and I am confortable letting him shoot those coreloks.

The 270 around brush, use a partition, x bullet, etc, and you will have an exit hole with 130 grain bullet. As an old 270 shooter, I sure wouldnt hesitate to pack my 270 around brush.

NO it ain't envy, more like disgust. In a time when hunter numbers are dropping and the younger hunters are going without good places to hunt because your out there culling management bucks so some Dude can spend 4000 dollars to kill a wallhanger your hurting hunting in the overall picture. Me I'd far rather spend my money going elk hunting in Wyoming where I don't have to put up with some Texans mouth that'd hold five gallons of piss closed. Where my 270 has no problems getting exit holes on much larger deer. Sitting in a elevated box stand or riding around the ranch sitting on a high seat in the back of a truck is just not the same as being in the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado.

Barnes made a 180 grain RN .277 bullet and I think I've still seen 'em cataloged here and there. Talk about yer flying javelins!
O'Connor mostly used the 130 but according to my Pet Loads book "...for grizzlies, brown bear and moose he has recommended heavier bullets with strong jackets." I think the 180 Barnes qualifies.

A partition in any weight in a 270 is pretty strong medicine. I wouldn't want to be on the other side of any deer with a Nosler on the way!

Tim

RSY,

In one of J'OCs books, "The Big Game Rifle", I believe, he talks about shooting extremely small groups with the 180 grain barnes & H-4831 out of his M70 FW and goes on to mention how it typically groups in the 1.5" range for him, so it seems they can stabilize. The point of the story was that the first group was probably a fluke, but the fact that he typically gets 1-1.5" shows they seemed to stabilize in his gun.

I have some 180s on my bench as well as 170 Speers. I haven't tried the 180s in my latest .270, but in an older one, groups were in the 3"@100 range w/ velocity just over 2700 fps. I've been thinking of working up some "hog loads" using the 170s at around 25-2600 fps (Old speer data shows you can get 27-2800 fps w/ 170s).

-Lou

I have been using the 270 Winchester since the mid 1960's. It is simply an amazing an reliable performer on Big Game. I have killed Black Bear, Mule Deer, Elk, Blacktail Deer, Antelope and Whitetailed Deer with this caliber. In my opinion anyone not having reliable kills on medium size Big Game with a 270 Winchester is in need of more range time! Period!
I retired my Winchester pre-64 Model 70 in caliber 270 Winchester some years ago. It was my main go to Rifle for Big Game season. The 130 gr. Nosler Partitions just killed everything they hit for decades and while Hunting throughtout the west and SE Alaska!
I replaced it with a custom Rifle built on a pre-64 Winchester Model 70 action. I chose the 280 Remington caliber for it and to tell the truth I can hardly tell the difference between these two excellent Game cartridges.
Then last summer I got a wild hair when I saw a Remington Sendero (Model 700 with fiberglass stock and a 26" heavy barrel) in caliber 270 Winchester. I always loved the caliber and wanted to try it again. I bought the Rifle mounted a large Leupold variable scope on it and the first load I hand made for it shot like gangbusters! I have heard good things lately about the Nosler sharp pointed and aerodynamic 130 gr. Ballistic Tips. I get great accuracy and velocity with my loading and I killed 3 head of Big Game with it this just ended season. Including an excellent eastern Montana Antelope with one shot at 366 yards (Leica lasered)!
I am going to guesstimate here but I feel certain I have killed at least 60 head of Big Game with my 270's and never had anything but excellent lethality on any of them.
In addition I have been around when at least that many other Big Game animals were taken by others with the 270 and the excellent terminal results on the animals is just standard operating procedure!
I simply can not imagine a well hit Deer being anything but dead REAL quickly when hit with a 270!
Long live the 270. Flat shooting, accurate, low recoil and muzzle blast, very lethal - it is an amazing and worthy Game cartridge. I highly recommend it!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

If we confine ourselves to deer size animals and a little larger I'd say there is no finer caliber than the .270 Winchester.

It's available is some fine featherweight rifles and the magnums can't make that claim.

I've shot around a 100 deer, most with a .270, all but 1 was a instant kill, and the buck that wasn't had a running start, and only made a few more yards after a lung hit. Only recovered one 130gr bullet, and it hit the shoulder bone of the right side traveled through to the hide on the left hind quarter, and was a perfect mushroom, deer dropped instantly. The .270 is THE Perfect deer cartridge.

My .270 -- A Remington 700 Mountain Rifle, one of the earliest ones -- gets its best accuracy with 150 gr. bullets. It's light, easy to carry, and a joy to shoot.