270 Winchester

Necked down from the 30/06, the 270 has a nice range of bullet weights from 90 to 170 grains. Bullet selection however, is not as large as that of the 30 caliber parent.

The 270 offers a flatter trajectory as the bullets carry a better ballistic coefficient number than the 308 family.

I do not own a 270 now but had one briefly. The gun I am referring to you may have seen listed on this site "For Sale" back in March. It was a Savage 110 synthetic package gun with the sling and scope. I bought it at a price I could not pass up and never intended to keep it, I did want to shoot it though.

I never shoot factory ammo, it is just a personal thing with me so I jumped in and bought dies and lead for this 270. Having put together some 110 grain loads, I headed for the range.

What I wanted to know was 2 things and I was confident the 20 shells I put together would clue me in.

  1. Does the gun have the potential to be accurate?
  2. How tolerable is the recoil ?

My findings:

  1. The gun impressed me. For an inexpensive package gun, it operated smoothly, handled well and spit out a groups that were consistent.
  2. Recoil was worse than expected. Even with a heavy coat on the 20 shells left my shoulder striped. The synthetic stock made the gun comfortable to carry and handle but too light for comfortable recoil.

Twenty shells certainly can not tell you much more than I mentioned above. However , playing with the numbers on a ballistic program (Load From Disk), it is obvious the 270 has the advantage in trajectory and down range energy when compared to the 30-06, at least in the lighter bullets. An added perk, it takes less powder to move the same weight bullet.

I do not have any load data to share with you but when I get a chance, I will try and list some reading material on the 270.

 

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Last Modified: Thursday, January 22, 2004 8:55 PM