270 Winchester: As Good as Ever

A tale of two 270s: Sako Model A7 Roughtech top; 
Winchester M70 Featherweight bottom

My Thesis – The 270 Winchester

If you hunt out west and don’t own a 270 Winchester, your hunting buddy or family member does. In my family, five of us own .270s and they tend to be a go-to pick for many situations. In fact, this cartridge works exceptionally well on pronghorn, mule deer, and sheep. It also is a solid elk cartridge, so it can be a one-gun option out west. I don’t think there is one rifle that is more adept at more tasks than the .270.

The .270 Winchester is unquestionably a very capable big-game hunting cartridge. This is particularly a western cartridge, with flat external ballistics, and pretty decent bullet energy. Chambered in a standard-weight bolt action sporting rifle, recoil is quite tolerable. Every bolt action rifle manufacturer chambers rifles in .270 Win. There is no one perfect rifle cartridge, but in North America (except for Grizzly bears), the .270 Win is a true contender.

Snippets of History

In 1925 the .270 Winchester was introduced in the Model 54 bolt action rifle. The advertised velocity of 3100 feet per second for a 130-grain bullet was fairly cutting-edge for the day. Offering flatter ballistic curves and lower recoil than its parent 30-06, it filled a niche. It also sparked a seemingly eternal debate between two camps: those who favor the .270 and those who love the 30-06 Springfield.

There seems to have been no real reason for Winchester’s selection of the .277” bullet diameter. Only Roy Weatherby and Winchester have developed cartridges to fit this bullet. Clearly, the 6.5 mm and 7 mm bullets are in favor today, so more research and development is being invested there. Despite this strange selection, the .270 Win has become one of the most popular big game cartridges of all time and rightly so.

Comparisons

There are a small handful of cartridges that are truly elk-capable but still offer moderate recoil. These include the 30-06, .308 Win, 7mm-08, 280 Rem, .270 Win, and 260 Rem/6.5 Creedmoor. Of these, the 7mm-08, 280 Rem, .270 Win, and 30-06 stand out as the most likely of the elk slayers on this lighter side of things. Recoil from the .270 and 7mm-08 are on the softer side as well as you can see in Table 1 below. All rifles are 8.5 pound sporters and muzzle velocities similar to keep the comparison fair.

Table 1 – Comparison of recoil for four popular lighter elk cartridges

Each of these rifles represents a solid choice for elk, with moderate recoil. The 30-06 Springfield hits you the hardest, but it also flings a very nice bullet down-range. If you were purely hunting elk, the 30-06 is a better choice on paper. Will that extra 16 percent recoil be worth the 10 percent extra muzzle energy? Only an individual hunter can know that from time behind the rifle. From my experience, younger, lighter-weight, and less experienced hunters will usually have more success with shot placement from a 7mm-08 or .270 Win. In some cases, I’d even recommend they step down to the .260 Rem or 6.5 Creedmoor, keeping shots to about 300 yards or a little more. Life is about tradeoffs, and recoil is a really pricey tradeoff from what I’ve observed.

Sweet Spot

Once we move to deer, sheep, and pronghorn, the .270 starts to show off a bit. This cartridge can spit 130 grain pills out at about 3200 fps, still with moderate recoil. At 6,000 feet of elevation, common out west and in the mountains, this translates to the following trajectory and energy for a 129 grain Barnes LRX:

Table 2 – .270 Win, 129 gr LRX at 6,000 feet.

The Barnes LRX is going to open very well at 2230 fps and faster, so mushrooming is no problem. Penetration for that bullet is also no problem. Sighted in so it stays about at 2.1 inches or less drop/rise out to about 280 yards makes this a lights-out flat out shooter. At 400 yards, you hold 12 inches high, which most hunters can do without turrets or ballistic reticles. Note that the math (velocity and energy) speaks to a 600-yard elk rifle as well.

Technology Helps

Modern bullets have given us so much. It used to be that you counted on only about half of the bullet staying together on impact at high velocity. The Nosler Partition solved this by guaranteeing between 50 and 80 percent weight retention. Today’s ultra-bonded and copper bullets are consistently finding numbers north of 90 percent retention. What this means is that now 120 grains of the original 129 grains of copper will bury itself in the dirt on the other side of your elk, deer, or antelope most times. Forty years ago, you needed to start out with a 180 to 200 grain bullet (.308 caliber and up) to make that happen.

The .270 Winchester is an exceptional deer, sheep, and pronghorn round. It is very flat shooting and way plenty of penetration and energy when it connects. There are possibly better medium-small game rounds like the 25-06 Remington, but the .270 Win is only guilty of hitting those animals with a bit more energy, even if it drops an inch or so more at 400 yards. While I’ve taken elk with a 25-06, I don’t recommend it for anyone as a starter rifle for elk.

More Points on the 270

The .270 Win is not the flattest shooting cartridge out there. Perhaps the 6.5-300 Weatherby currently holds that crown. It comes at a price of muzzle blast, recoil, and barrel life. The .270 isn’t the ultimate bone-crushing elk magnum. Maybe the 338 Lapua or Norma Improved holds that crown. Perhaps it is one of the ridiculously fast new 300s. Again, more recoil…lots more. If you choose to “gun-up”, then you should be one of those experienced folks who have proven to themselves they can handle the big magnums while retaining accuracy. That is a small group of people, from my observations.

If you could only buy one rifle and wanted to hunt deer, sheep, elk, pronghorn, moose, caribou, pigs, black bear, and mountain goats, the .270 Winchester would be a solid choice. There are some other versatile rounds out there. I named some of them above. Somehow, the .270 stands the test of time as one of the greatest big-game cartridges of all time. Maybe that is why a cartridge developed in 1925 is still among the most popular cartridges in gun stores in 2018.

Wrap it Up

My daughter hunted with a 25-06 and .270 her first two seasons, taking two muleys, a pronghorn, two cow elk, and a bull elk. When it came time to buy her own rifle, she firmly decided the caliber would be .270 Win. She handles that recoil very well, and so this cartridge was a perfect choice for her. This adds to the .270s owned by my Dad, wife, son, and myself. Easier for me to buy reloading components!

There are other contenders for the best all-around out-west rifle. The .280 and 30-06 probably are the nearest competition. The 30-06 may be more popular as an all-around for most folks. I land in the .270 camp because it shoots incredibly flat, handles the elk hunting chores out to 500 yards and more just fine, and comes with the best recoil of the bunch. Jack O’Connor rightly chose the .270 Winchester as his cartridge of choice in the second half of his career. The cartridge is a North American hunting classic as valid today as it ever was.