.270 Winchester

History

Introduced in 1925 along with the Winchester Model 54 bolt action rifle under the name "270 WCF" (270 Winchester Centerfire), the .270 Winchester was not an immediate success due to the popularity of the relatively recently introduced .30-06 Springfield, chambered for the M1903 Springfield bolt action rifle, which was commonly "sporterized" for hunting purposes.

The earliest iteration of the .270 Winchester cartridge was introduced with the Winchester Model 51 Imperial rifle probably in or about 1919. Only 24 Winchester Model 51's were produced, and only a handful of those were chambered in and marked ".27 Cal". Winchester's .27 Caliber was renamed 270 Winchester with the Model 54, the replacement for the Model 51 Winchester rifle. Winchester Model 51 serial number 1 is marked .27 Cal as is serial number 3 which is in the collection of the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming.

However, the .270 Winchester attained great popularity among hunters and sporting rifle enthusiasts in the succeeding decades and especially in the post-World War II period, ranking it among the most popular and widely used big game hunting cartridges worldwide, especially with the widespread popularity of rifle scopes. Shooters started noticing that the .277" caliber cartridge was capable of shooting flatter than the popular 30–06.

The .270 Winchester, conceived solely as a big game hunting cartridge, became very popular, in part, due to the widespread praises of gun writer Jack O'Connor who used the cartridge for 40 years and touted its merits in the pages of Outdoor Life as well as other renowned gun writers of the time such as late Col. Townsend Whelen.

The cartridge was initially commercially loaded to drive a 130 grain (8.4 gram) bullet at approximately 3140 ft/s, later reduced to 3060 ft/s, demonstrating a high performance at the time of its introduction while being marketed as a suitable cartridge for big game shooting in the 300 to range. Two additional bullet weights were soon introduced: a 100-grain (6.5 gram) hollow-point bullet for varmint shooting, and a 150 grain (9.7 gram) bullet, offering a higher sectional density, which made it suitable for achieving better penetration for large sized deer, such as wapiti, and moose. However, the 130 grain bullet remains the most popular option.

For decades the only other commercial 6.8mm cartridge available for sporting purposes was the .270 Weatherby Magnum, which offered a flatter trajectory based on the larger powder capacity allowed by the belted magnum case, however due to the higher price and offer limit, it never reached the popularity of the .270 Winchester.

Nowadays a new breed of .277" caliber cartridges have been introduced to the market, including the .270 Winchester Short Magnum, which launches a bullet of the same weight 200 fps faster from a short action mechanism; the 27 Nosler, which is even faster but uses substantially more powder, and the recent 6.8 Western, which is basically a modification of the 270 WSM firing a heavier and larger bullet with a higher ballistic coefficient. The latest .277 round is Sig Sauer's .277 Fury, which utilizes a hybrid steel and brass case to safely reach 80,000 psi. Nevertheless, none of these new cartridges match the popularity of the old 270 Winchester and offer little advantage for practical hunting purposes.

Other of the main reasons why the .270 Win is still one of the most popular loads is because of its acceptance worldwide. Internationally, ammunition and firearms manufacturers offer this chambering in a wide range of firearm options including bolt-actions, single-shots, lever-actions (such as the Browning BLR), pump-actions (such as the Remington 7600), autoloaders (such as the Remington 7400), and even a few double rifles.

Sporting use

The .270 Winchester is a suitable cartridge for hunting deer-sized game at open ranges making it suitable for plains game and mountain hunting. It may be chambered in standard length actions and though the optimum barrel size is considered to be 24 inches, it doesn't lose much muzzle velocity with 22 inch barrels, making it a suitable cartridge for developing a light mountain rifle.

The .270 Winchester cartridge is equipped with a 130-grain bullet traveling at approximately 3,060 feet per second (fps). When sighted in to intersect 3 inches above the line of sight at 100 yards (about 90 meters), it maintains a trajectory that rises no more than 3.5 inches and aligns with the line of sight around 270 yards. This setup allows for a maximum point blank range of roughly 325 yards, ideal for effectively targeting game the size of deer within a 7-inch diameter target area. Hunters can shoot confidently within this range without needing to adjust for bullet drop. Additionally, the cartridge, loaded with the 130-grain bullet, retains around 1,500 foot-pounds of energy up to 400 yards, meeting the minimum recommended for hunting elk.

Performance

Cartridges are commonly available from 100 to sizes with 130 and loads being by far the most popular. Though handloaders have a wider range of options with the availability of bullets in a number of weights from 90 to 180 grains (5.8 to 11.7 grams), rifles are barrelled with 1:10 inch twist rifling, which may stabilize bullets up to 150 gr in order to provide the required accuracy expected. Common bullet weight recommendations for shooting different game are as follows:

• 90 - bullets: varmint and small deer
• 130 gr bullets: deer size game including mule deer, white tail, sheep, mountain goats, antelope
• 140 - bullets: deer, red stag, elk, moose, caribou, and similar larger animals.

However, bullet construction is more important than bullet weight in order to shoot the heavier game.

Recent introductions of low-drag bullets suited to the .270 Winchester such as the Nosler Accubond Long-Range, Hornady ELD-X and Matrix long-range bullets are promoting renewed interest in the cartridge among long-range hunters.

While it is true that a .270 Winchester case can be formed from a .30-06 Springfield case, the case length of a .30-06 is 2.494 in while the case length of a .270 is 2.540 in. However, the brass of a .30-06 case will often stretch, or lengthen, past the dimension of the .30-06 case when necked down to form a .270 case requiring trimming regardless, and "The slight difference in length of reformed cases doesn't make any practical difference."

References

• C.I.P. TDCC 270 Win.

References

1. ".270 Win data from Hodgdon".
2. "Hornady Superformance commercial ammo specifications".
3. The Complete Reloading Manual for the .270 Winchester, Loadbooks USA, Inc., 2004, pp.13,19
4. Spomer, Ron. (May 2022). "270 Winchester: Better Hunting Cartridge Than 6.5 Creedmoor and 30-06?".
5. ".270 Winchester".
6. Barnes Reloading Manual Number 2 (1997)
7. Hornady Handbook of Cartridge Reloading, Fourth Edition (1996)
8. Speer Reloading Manual Number 12 (1994)
9. Speer Reloading Manual Number Ten (1979), p. 182