A good friend of mine just got a remington rifle in .270 for christmas. Since he is my hunting buddy, i ordered him some 90gr Sierra HP to shoot various varmints with. Since it was his first rifle, i figured that he would do himself well shooting it and getting ready for next year's deer season. The lightest factory stuff around here is about 130gr and they shoot pretty well in the rifle. Therefore, i have undertook this task of finding him a decently accurate load for his .270 with these 90gr bullets. Has anyone tried these bullets? The cases will be Winchester. I have never loaded for a .270 (i've never owned one) so i'm kind of starting from scratch on this one. Anyone have any good varmint loads for it?
Thanks,
Simon

Ruck:

I have played with a few loads, and I prefer to have the velocity down to Big Game Velocities.
It helps with familiarity shooting the larger 130 grain bullets, when the 90 grainers are at the same velocity.

I use quicker powders also for things like that, so it heats the barrel up less in long shooting sessions, and also less powder provides less recoil and less throat erosion on the barrel.

Try any of these:
Powder: SR 4759. Primer, Large Rifle ( any will do)

20 grs: 2110 fps
21 grs: 2227 fps
22 grs: 2259 fps
23 grs: 2408 fps
24 grs: 2507 fps
25 grs: 2496 fps
26 grs: 2648 fps
27 grs: 2722 fps
28 grs: 2788 fps
29 grs: 2854 fps
30 grs: 2922 fps
31 grs: 2970 fps
32 grs: 3044 fps

Accuracy was excellent with this powder, and recoil more close to a 243.

You will also find this load will be less explosive on coyotes than the 3500 fps loads.

Good luck
cheers and happy new year,
seafire

thanks seafire, i'll check them out. As of right now, i am thinking that my friend wants to push his 270 to the upper limits to see what those little 90gr bullets will do to a varmint...i'll definietely keep those loads listed in mind though if we can't get good accuracy out of a hotter load.
Thanks,
Ruck

Try some Varget with this bullet. Also you might consider the Speer TNT as it has a much better BC.

I've shot the Sierra 90 gr. HP in three rifles with IMR-4064 and like this load for accuracy, light recoil, speed, and terminal performance. I've not had the oppurtunity to shoot it over 200yds so cannot really comment on how well it will perform on vermin past 200. In the Browning A bolt/boss we shot a 5 shot bug hole last summer.
IMR-4064 startload is 46.8 and book max is 52.8 with listed speed of approx. 3500 fps. This bullet will not seat out to the lands. I seat it near .270 deep into the neck.

Ruck:

Another bullet I played with for long range for someone else in this caliber is the 110 grain Sierra SP.

Handloading you can easily get this bullet in the 3300 fps range and with a little over max listed loads for it with RL 19 and RL 22 you can stretch that out a hair more.

A nephew nailed a real big and fat prairie dog in Montana with that load at about 3400 from the muzzzle. The shot was at 400 yds and with a 6.5 x 20 scope on it. It sure made the prairie dog do a somersault to the tune of it looked like it went about 4 feet in the air and was knocked backwards by about 8 feet.

He nailed another one with that combo at 50 yds and there was just basically prairie dog parts laying about. Resembled the remains of a prairie dog that bailed out at 50000 feet and forget his parachute.

Too much kick for a day prairie dog shooting, but it would be fine for Virginia groundhogs.

Cheers

hey guys, just by chance i ran a load through the rifle consisting of 63.0 grs of H450 and the 90 gr Sierra HP for the .270. The cases were WIN and the primers were win LR. The only thing i did to the cases was to run them through the flash hole deburrer and i uniformed the primer hole. Shot 5 shot group, first shot was a little high and left...the next 4 went into a group measuring slightly under .438. Needless to say, i was impressed for just throwing some stuff together.