July 15, 2025
By J. Scott Rupp
Time was, the biggest campfire cartridge argument was “.270 or .30-06?” Introduced in 1925 by Winchester in its first centerfire bolt action, the Model 54, the .270 Win. was one of the speed kings of its day, with a 130-grain bullet exceeding 3,000 fps.
It was faster and shot flatter than the already established .30-06, and for a lot of its history it was largely thought of as a Western cartridge—no doubt due in large part to the influence of outdoor writer Jack O’Connor. His exploits using the .270 Win. for sheep, elk, deer and more had a big impact on the sporting public.
The cartridge is based on the .30-03, forerunner of the .30-06. The .270, though, used a .277-inch bullet. That diameter was an out-of-the-box choice at the time, but the round caught on and has been a mainstay for U.S. big game hunters, with plenty of speed and power but relatively low recoil.
The 130- and 150-grain loads have historically been the most popular. A typical 130-grain spitzer load leaves the muzzle at just over 3,000 fps for a muzzle energy around 2,730 ft.-lbs. With a 200-yard zero it’ll drop just under 19 inches at 400 yards, retaining around 1,450 ft.-lbs. of energy. The 150 leaves the gate at about 2,850 fps for 2,705 ft.-lbs. At 400 yards it’s dropping 24.4 inches and carrying around 1,175 ft.-lbs. of energy.
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Universal Acceptance (Hits and misses chart provided by the author) The .270 is loaded by everyone who sells centerfire hunting ammunition, and countless rifles of every persuasion—bolt, lever, pump, semiauto, single-shot, straight pull—have been chambered to it.
For all its attributes, though, some consider the .270 somewhat limited. Thanks to its typical 1:10 twist it can’t really handle anything heavier than 150-grain bullets. That shortcoming led to the recent 6.8 Western, which is designed to shoot long, heavy .277 bullets up to 170 grains with high ballistic coefficients.
Whether you find this restricting depends on what, how and where you hunt. Deer? The .270 is all you ever need for whitetails, mulies or blacktails. Same goes for wild sheep (just ask Jack), goats and pronghorns.
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Bigger game? The .270 was and is an effective elk cartridge with proper bullet and placement. And if you think it’s on the light side for moose, lots of hunters would tell you you’re wrong, including me. On a once-in-a-lifetime combo sheep/moose hunt in Alaska, I killed a fine ram at over 200 yards and a few days later anchored a monster moose with the same .270 at 30 yards.
Useage While I don’t have a ton of experience with black bears, there’s really no reason the right .270 bullet placed in the right spot won’t work. Brown bears? I’m sure it’s been done, but you won’t catch me trying it. On my first African safari, one of the guys in camp killed every species of plains game on his menu—warthog, gemsbok, kudu, even an eland—with a .270. One-shot kills all.
It’s fashionable these days to look down one’s nose at long-action cartridges; short actions are all the rage. In last year’s big game rifle roundup, of the rifles we covered the .270 was chambered in only 17 new models; its fellow long-action old-timer, the .30-06, just 19. That compares to 31 for the 6.5 PRC, 23 for the 7mm PRC and .308 Win., and 22 for the 6.5 Creedmoor.
As someone who shoots both the .308 and the .280 Rem. a lot, I don’t get hung up on action length, although I certainly understand the advantages that short actions offer.
As Craig Boddington is fond of saying, you can’t love or use all cartridges equally. Other than that Alaska trip and maybe one or two other “work” hunts, I was never a .270 guy. But if you handed me a good-shooting .270 right now and told me this was the only rifle I could use for the rest of my hunting days, I’d just nod and say “Okay”—and not feel like I’d gotten a raw deal.
