Ode To The .270

 I recently saw a video from the Steven Lines YouTube channel where he had asked professional guides what round they used or recommended to clients to use to hunt mule deer ("I Asked 100 Deer Guides What the Best Mule Deer Hunting Cartridge Is"). It turned out that the top cartridge recommended was the .270 Winchester. Which brings me to the following article from American Hunter: "An Ode to the .270 Winchester" by Philip Massaro.  An excerpt:

The .270 Winchester shares many attributes of the .30-06 Springfield, such as the .473-inch case head diameter, the 17½-degree shoulder angle, and the 1.948-inch datum line (from base to shoulder), yet it uses the longer 2.54-inch case length of the earlier .30-03 Springfield. It seems to be lost to history exactly where the .277-inch projectile diameter came from; like the .338 caliber, it seems to be a slight variant of existing projectiles, presumable to be “uniquely Winchester,” though that is purely my own speculation after years of researching. A 1:10-inch twist barrel would see the cartridge served by bullet weights between 100 and 150 grains, with a handful of round nose 160-grain slugs being able to be properly stabilized in that barrel. The cartridge will push the 130-grain bullets (possibly the most popular choice for deer hunters) to just over 3000 fps, and the 150-grain bullets will leave the muzzle somewhere around 2850 fps. Both loads will deliver roughly 2,700 ft.-lbs. at the muzzle, and offer a very useable trajectory for the big-game hunter. The 130-grain bullet has a sectional density of 0.242, and the 150-grain bullet comes in at 0.279; this roughly translates to the 165- and 180-grian bullets in .30-caliber, which is not a bad place to be at all. Though the 100-grain bullets have long been available, I don’t know many hunters who do much varmint or predator hunting with their .270 Winchester.   

The famous hunting and gun writer Jack O’Connor championed the cartridge and probably was as key to its success as anything, and proved it by taking all sorts of big game with it. As another author relates:

He’d wrung out the .270 on three continents. He shot at least 36 species of big game with this cartridge. These included more than 30 rams (four grand slams of American mountain sheep and four Old World species), an even dozen moose, more than a dozen black bears, two grizzlies, at least 18 elk, 17 caribou and several species of deer. How many deer? I doubt if even Jack knew. He also used the .270 in Africa on such tough game as oryx and zebra, as well as ibex, gazelle and antelope in Iran and India. 

 It thus rivals the .30-06 as a "do all" cartridge. Perhaps that isn't as important as it once was, though. I expect at one time most hunters probably only had one or two rifles and had to make do with those. My father had more than one rifle, but that was simply to supply rifles to my brothers to use in hunting. His go-to rifle was a light weight .30-06--I don't remember him hunting with any other rifle. Now it seems that most hunters will have a different rifle for each type of game or environment. But perhaps that is my perception based on the firearms media. 

Related:

• "Jack O’Connor on the .270 Winchester vs .30-06 Springfield"--Outdoor Life. 
• "Great Deer Cartridges: O’Connor’s Baby, the .270 Winchester"--Deer and Deer Hunting.
• "Classic 270 Winchester Still Deadly"--Ron Spomer Outdoors.