Who shoot's a 270WSM

[superdown]

I am considering a 270WSM i am pretty sure i will be buying a BAR in this cal. after we get done with our hunting trips for the year and Christmas. I would like to know what you think of the 270wsm and how it has performed for you. also what ammo you use?

[scottL]

Well, I'm totally new here after PC recommended this board to me last night but I'll take a whack at this one since I didn't see any other replies...

I used to spend just about all my spare hours for close to 7 years doing ballistics research (external and terminal) and cartridge (especially wildcat design) research. My most recent project is a 6.5mm/.264 wildcat based on the .300 WSM case, same (as I recall) as the .270 WSM. For the 6.5 caliber I actually shorten the case to reduce it's capacity by around 10 grains (major pain btw) to avoid some of the issues I'll mention below as that case simply holds too much powder in my thoughts for that small of a caliber... or for that matter for the caliber you mention.

Personally regarding the .270 WSM, being the smallest bore diameter in that series of cartridges, I see it as being over bore capacity to a great deal and suspect you'd see barrel throat erosion / *relatively* short barrel life on it, probably in the 700 to 1000 rounds (optimistically) range. I say this based on research of the 6.5-.284, the 6.5 Rem Mag, the .264 Win Mag and the .300 WSM. However this may not be a problem for you if all you plan to do is hunt with it primarily as even 700 rounds is a lot for a hunting rifle to see and would serve some hunters decades (hopefully most folks practice more than that though.) Even after throat erosion, unless it was severe, you probably would only find a need to clean it more often to avoid pressure increases and loss of accuracy, and possibly a need to change to a different load for the best accuracy as the distance the bullet sits off the rifling lands changes as the throat of the barrel chamber erodes.

That being said, despite the fact the .270 WSM burns much more powder than it needs (seriously diminishing returns at that point) and would have resultingly more muzzle flash and noise, the biggest concern by far in a hunting rifle for me would be *terminal bullet performance*. Bullet manufacturers *must* design bullets to reliably expand within an assumed velocity range. 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. So if you go with the .270 WSM it would be my recommendation to stay far away from typically less expensive, over-the-counter brands of ammo and stay strictly with the "elite" or "supreme" or other high-end (costly) boxes of ammo if you don't load your own rounds. Regardless, I would definitely encourage you to stay with bullets such as the Barnes TSX (probably not the TTSX btw), various makes of true bonded-core bullets or at a minimum one of the various makes of partitioned bullets... and in general stay away from the standard soft spitzer pointed bullets or those with polymer tips as these tend to open up too quickly at higher velocity impacts and/or break up on impact. And yes (though this may invite some criticism) I've even had the semi-recently released Barnes tipped TSX blow up on impact in my 6.5mm wildcat - and that using over 10 grains less powder than your .270 WSM would use. In fact the near-side hole on a bear I shot with the tipped TSX was the greater than the size of a horizontal football without hitting anything but 1 rib, and after talking to Barnes' Tech Line they stated I was pushing it about 250 fps faster than they designed it for; they recommended I change back to the non-tipped Barnes TSX... Thus my recommendation from staying away from all polymer-tipped variants in your chambering, even the Barnes.

You might find in the end though that the .300 WSM will serve you better as an all-around gun. You will likely have more rifle models to choose from, it will offer a greater variety of preloaded ammo, will have greater availability of bullet weights for sale at more stores, will have longer barrel life, will be marginally less fickle typically in finding accurate loads and will have less muzzle flash due to being a more efficient round (as it relates to more fully burning the powder prior to the bullet exiting the barrel.)

Just my 2 cents from a newbie to this site!  Best wishes on whatever you decide to go with!

[J Snow73]

WOW Scott nice first post I also have a .270 wsm, but have yet to shoot it so will have to get back to you hopefully after this weekend

[KimberRich]

WOW Scott nice first post I also have a .270 wsm, but have yet to shoot it so will have to get back to you hopefully after this weekend

No kidding.  Nice first post.  Welcome to the site and thanks for all the good input.

[superdown]

  Thanks for taking the time to post great first one. I will be using this exclusively for hunting i am pretty much set on the bar short trac as the rifle i want. I already have an A-boltII .325wsm so i want something smaller.

[C-Money]

Firefighter4607 uses a .270wsm. I hunt with him a lot. He killed a 346'' 7x7 bull with his 270wsm. He likes it and it has worked very well for him on a wide variety of game. I'd say go for it if you want one. Me, I use the .270win and have had great results with it, you might want to look at a few reloading manuals and compare the two.

[markts]

I love my270wsm

[superdown]

Anyone got pics of what they have shot with the 270wsm. I shot one fat whittie doe in Idaho about 8yrs ago with my 270win rem mtn rifle with 140gr. fail safe's put her down like a sack of rock's.

[C-Money]

270win, 274 yards, 2010, one shot. I have a bunch of other pic's of animals that have fallen to the 270win! This is my most recent. I will look for some of FF4607's kills with the 270wsm.

[wiremonkey]

i also have a 270 wsm. great shooting gun, very fast and accurate. i gotta say i like the 140 gr accubond but if i had it to do over i would have bought the 300 wsm just for the selection in bullet weight 

[superdown]

nice buck

[UBA]

I shoot betters out of mine and love it.

[carpsniperg2]

my wife has claimed mine here is her buck's from this year and last year. 270 wsm with my hand loads 130g nosler btip 4831sc powder cci lrm primer win case. she loves that gun. the 270 wsm is one of the best cals out there  has enough power to take any animal that walks around here and many other places and is one of the flatest shooting cal over 24 cal as well. great cal one of my faves

[ecnclan]

Haven't killed anything yet with my 270 wsm yet but very happy with the accuracy and velocity.  It doesn't use much more powder for a similar bullet weight than a 3006 and has a similar recoil.  Plenty of quality bullets out there especially if you reload. The 270 weatherby has been around for a little while and reaches velocities slightly higher while using much more powder, in comparison the 270wsm is actually a pretty efficient round.

[C-Money]

Hey Carpsniper, Those are some heavy horned bucks! Very cool!

[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.