Celebrating 100 Years with the .270 Winchester

Maintaining relevance for 100 years is no small feat, but the .270 Winchester cartridge has done just that.

Introduced alongside Winchester’s Model 54 bolt-action rifle in 1925, the company was hoping to combine the two new products and cash in on a re-emerging boom among bolt-action rifle owners. Much of the market’s movement at that time was due to the post-World War I landscape and the many veterans who were right at home with bolt-action rifles in their hands. Those vets were intimately familiar with the .270’s parent case, the .30-06 Springfield, and the appeal of this new cartridge was that it offered very similar performance with less perceived felt recoil.

Success was no certainty in the early days of the .270 Winchester, and the Model 54 for which it was designed was unable to stand the test of time. A heavy trigger pull and difficulty in mounting a scope due to the bolt angle led to the Model 54’s demise in 1936. What emerged from those ashes, however, was just the shot in the arm that the .270 Winchester needed.

A revamped version of the Model 54 was launched in 1936 under a new name: Model 70. Without a doubt, the Winchester Model 70 has gone on to be one of the most popular bolt-action rifles of all time, and the .270 Winchester cartridge is frequently mentioned in the same breath any time the rifle is mentioned. Whereas the .270’s .30-06 parent cartridge was designed for military purposes and was later adapted to the hunting and sporting community, the .270 Winchester was introduced with hunting and sporting in mind as its main purpose, but it would take time for the cartridge to truly take off.

Enter Hunter and Gun Writer Jack O’Connor

He purchased a Model 54 in .270 when the gun and cartridge first came out in 1925. Over the decades, he shot many different rifles in different calibers, but it was in 1954 that O’Connor officially bestowed the title of “No 1” to his custom Winchester Model 70 chambered in .270 Winchester. To avoid wearing out that gun when testing new loads as part of his day job, he had another one made up and called it “No 2.” No other rifle and caliber combination came as close to perfect in his mind.

His affinity for the Model 70 in .270 Winchester and his influence on the hunting community is readily apparent in the rifle’s production numbers. Before the model’s overhaul in 1964, the rifle was available in 17 different calibers. Of the almost 600,000 guns produced in that time, 21% of them were chambered in .270 Winchester.

There’s no way he could have known how things would progress when he bought his first rifle chambered for the cartridge, but the .270 Winchester went on to be known in many circles simply as “Jack’s cartridge.”

Even though O’Connor is the person everyone immediately thinks of with the .270, contemporary gun writer Col. Townsend “Townie” Whelen, who created no less than four cartridges that bear his name, was also a fan.

Hunting Star

As a purpose-built big game hunting cartridge, the need for a flat trajectory and high remaining velocity was, and still is, paramount. For a bit of comparison between .270 Winchester and .30-06 Springfield, let’s look at two of the newer hunting loads on the market: Federal’s Terminal Ascent and Hornady’s American Whitetail. When loaded with similar grain weight bullets (exact grain-to-grain comparisons not available) and zeroed at 200 yards, the .270 averages seven inches less drop at 500 yards than the .30-06 (38” vs 45”). In terms of velocity, the .270 is traveling an average of 300 feet per second faster at 500 yards than the .30-06 (2,000 fps vs 1,700 fps).

The comparison isn’t meant to detract from the .30-06; it has proven itself to be an excellent hunting round over the past 119 years. While it’s true that most hunters will rarely, if ever, take a shot at 500 yards, those who do would certainly appreciate having the added velocity and lesser drop afforded by the .270 than the .30-06 when it comes to a make-or-break shot on a once-in-a-lifetime hunt.

When the .270 Winchester was introduced in 1925, it was only the second cartridge on the market to reach speeds in excess of 3,000 feet per second. The original 130-grain bullet for the .270 advertised a velocity of 3,140 feet per second. The .250 Savage was the first to hit 3,000 feet per second when it hit the market ten years before in 1915. The .250 Savage was able to reach such speeds because it used a light 87-grain bullet, and it was designed by a wildcatter named Charles Newton who specialized in modifying the .30-06 case.

Since the .270 was meant to be a hunting round, this lightning fast speed, which was meant to be a huge selling point, was actually one of its earliest complaints among shooters. The 130-grain bullets had a tendency to fragment upon impact at such high speeds, destroying a much larger amount of meat compared to other cartridges of the day.

Heavier Options

Within just a few years, Winchester responded to hunters’ concerns. In 1933, a 150-grain bullet was added to the lineup, with a 100-grain option arriving in 1937.

In Jack O’Connor’s lifetime, the .270 was offered in a number of different bullet weights and he tried them all. Nonetheless, he had an affinity for that original 130-grain weight, once stating in a letter that “[t]his may shake quite a few people up, but I am inclined to believe that the 130-grain bullet is probably the one best bullet weight yet, if the bullet construction is adapted to the animal.”

O’Connor knew the importance of bullet construction and just how far things had come in the 53 years since the .270 had been introduced up until his death in 1978. Now, some 47 years after that, bullet technology and construction has expanded by leaps and bounds.

A perfect modern-day illustration of adapting the bullet construction to the animal would be Hornady’s 130-grain SST Superformance. It has a muzzle velocity of 3,200 feet per second and with a 200 yard zero out to 500 yards, it is still traveling at 2,216 feet per second with less than 34 inches of drop. That’s pretty darn fast and flat. Since bullet technology has come a long way in 100 years, these new SST bullets are designed specifically for expansion upon high velocity impact with the integrity to stay intact.

Adversaries

Elmer Keith, another gun writer of tremendous fame and a contemporary of Jack O’Connor, wasn’t much of a .270 fan. He favored larger calibers and heavier bullets, but he did concede that a 150-grain Nosler Partition bullet in a .270 Winchester cartridge could get the job done on elk. It probably pained him to admit it.

Arguments among gun writers about the efficacy of .270 Winchester have been going on almost since the cartridge was introduced. It’s highly unlikely that this is going to change any time soon. Make a visit to the gun store or take a trip to a hunting camp and I can guarantee that the topic of the .270’s ability to get the job done will come up at one time or another. Failing that, all you’ve got to do is make one quick Internet search to see that the debate is alive and well.

One thing that isn’t up for debate, however, is that even after 100 years, the .270 Winchester is still going strong.

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