Who shoot's a 270WSM

[carpsniperg2]

thanks! wife was meat hunting this year  always love to get those older bucks that ain't much into the freezer, rather then a young deer with good genes. the pic of her buck from last year, does not do it justice. he was a masher of a benchy, all webbed up as well both were one shot kills this years buck was about 90 yards neck shot dropped in his tracks and lasts years was something just over a 100 like 120 or something like that. right in the boiler room, buck went less then 10 yards as was stone dead.

[Bob33]

As there are no other significantly popular high-velocity .270 chamberings on the market, it's fairly safe to assume most are anticipating muzzle and impact velocities that are going to be notably lower than the .270 WSM is going to deliver for you - velocities typical of the .270 Winchester to be specific.

Good post.  I believe the impact velocity concern is not as great as it once was.  For example, the 140 grain Accubond is, according to Nosler, designed to work effectively at 3200 ft/second.  You'd have to be mighty close to a critter to have a 270 WSM 140 grain going faster than 3200.

The Barnes bullets are good and would be my first choice.

[fishnate]

Very informative post.  Any thoughts about the 7mm WSM 

[scottL]

As there are no other significantly popular high-velocity .270 chamberings on the market, it's fairly safe to assume most are anticipating muzzle and impact velocities that are going to be notably lower than the .270 WSM is going to deliver for you - velocities typical of the .270 Winchester to be specific.

Good post.  I believe the impact velocity concern is not as great as it once was.  For example, the 140 grain Accubond is, according to Nosler, designed to work effectively at 3200 ft/second.  You'd have to be mighty close to a critter to have a 270 WSM 140 grain going faster than 3200.

The Barnes bullets are good and would be my first choice.

Thanks gang! I appreciate the warm welcome, especially on such a potentially sensitive topic as "what's the best cartridge" type of thing.

I definitely agree that the impact velocity concern is no where near what it used to be (except in some outdated factory loads.) Still, it's just that I'm skeptical of most bullet manufacturer's claims about their velocity envelope. I also know that some popular .270 WSM / 140-grain bullet hand loads exceed 3200 fps at the muzzle. When it comes to shot distances though I think most of us would agree, prepare for the worst, hope for the best - and seldom is that more true than where you expect to encounter (or how far) your next big game animal will be at. Truth be told, although my farthest big game animal (a bear directly down wind and aware of us) was taken at better than 430 yards, the majority of my best animals have been less than 45 yards and that includes both my bobcat and cougar and my best whitetail and best bear (all were without dogs.) My guess is if most of us went back to our notes and took all of our big game and averaged the yardage they were shot at, a surprising number of us would find the average was considerably less than 100 yards. Not counting my game on 1 trip to Africa, last time I did that exercise my average (mostly in eastern Washington and Idaho) was 28.7 yards.

But even so, regarding case efficiency for example my 6.5 wildcat for example reaches nearly the same velocities shooting berger VLDs than the 140-grain bullet loads listed on the "handloads dot com" site for a .270 WSM, using just shy of 10 grains (over 15%) less powder. I'm running as much as nearly 14 grains less than some of the other loads. Considering a .264-diameter bullet is inherently less efficient due to it's smaller base diameter than a .277 bullet with regards to being able to generate bullet velocity, although I know the .270 WSM will kill critters dead right now, I just think the .300 WSM will give you more bullet options and is more efficient. Some might ask: why then did I go down to a 6.5mm bullet and then go through all the work of reducing the practical powder capacity (deducts bullet intrusion area) by about a dozen grains? 7 bad neck vertebra. So recoil is a big issue for me - but so is a passion for creating wild cats that have a good balance between velocity and efficiency (always a matter of subjective preference in the end.)

I'll admit that the .270 WSM is a great, flat-shooting rifle to be sure... I just wonder if it couldn't get there with a whole lot less powder.  Most folks I think would be fairly surprised to realize the .270 WSM's raw case capacity is actually slightly more than that of the Weatherby variant. It's practical case capacity, due to the case body length and the intended rifle action length, is only slightly less than the Weatherby. According to one source it's as follows: a)using a 130-grain bullet, the .270 WSM holds only 1 grain less usable capacity (essentially equivelant) than the Weatherby; b)using a 150-grain bullet, it hold only about 4 grains less (still not a huge amount.) So it's overall efficiency is actually only slightly better than that of the .270 Weatherby. That's why I'd recommend a .300 WSM more - and as a bonus, given similar bullet construction you'd likely see a bit less meat damage on average. I think the 7mm WSM would be a tad better too (especially considering some of the eye-catching ballistic coefficient bullets that have come out recently) but apparently the 7mm WSM is not catching on like they hoped. Shame, seems like a really good cartridge, especially for those that need to reach "way, way, way out yonder." But the .270 is still a great round, my 2 cents is that the .300 is a tad better from my point of view.

[ecnclan]

Good info ScottL, thanks for the post.

[superdown]

Another very informative and interesting post 

[Bigshooter]

I have a m70 featherweight in 270wsm that i LOVE.  I have it loaded with a 140gr accubond using accurate arms MagPro.  Can't remember how many grains now.  But i'm getting about 3200fps.  I've taken 8 or 10 deer with it now.  And the only down side I have found is there is a lot of bloodshot.