Which Rifle 270 OR 30-06

[Boomer]

Boomer...to some degree, the theory of sectional density is a measure of momentum so that's why it does apply when comparing idenical bullets but you are 100% correct that you must be comparing apples to apples and when most people throw around the term SD, they aren't.

Soft point bullet is a pretty broad term and there are lots of construction/performance differences even within that broad category but you are correct that penetration will be pretty similar between indentical bullets of different weights fired at maximum pressure. As you pointed out, the heavier bullet will likely have a larger frontal diameter after expansion so that would play some factor in limiting penetration. While you are starting with bullets of identical diameter, they may not end up that way and penetration would vary slightly just as it would with two identical weight bullets of different calibres.

Well I challenge you to try it out and then tell me that there would be a greater difference in penetration between two soft point bullets of the same construction but of differing weights fired at the same pressure from the same rifle, than there would be of identical bullets into the same medium. The variation in penetration would equal the extreme velocity spread, and in practical terms would be meaningless.

 

[sheephunter]

Note the word "slight". I'm trying to agree with you here but just stating that the larger diameter of the heavier bullet would "slightly" limit its penetration compared to the lighter bullet. I agree, in a moose, it would be meaningless but in a test medium, the "slight" difference can be measured! It's simple physics.....a larger diameter object requires more force to move through the test medium than and smaller diameter one....all other variables being equal of course! More surface area equals more friction. Friction equals deceleration. Deceleration equals less penetration.

 

[LeftyM77]

That's bulls**t.

thats bold without any back up but I guess the same could be said about mine

 

[LeftyM77]

If you were to look at a .270 Winchester shooting a 130 grain bullet and a 7mm Mag shooting a 150, (Really, those are the two that compete against each other) there isn't much difference, honest. Lets look at it this way:

I just grabbed my Nosler #6 manual. I'm going to select a medium load from each cartridge. The .270 will send a 130 grain bullet at 3078 FPS. The 7mm will send a 150 at 3075 FPS. The highest .270 is 3158 and the highest 7mm is 3248. (Note I didn't say fastest because Colonal Craig uses that word, and I dispise his writing. )

Now, if you run those numbers through my Ballistics Program, I come up with the .270, zeroed at 200 yards will print:

100 1.4
200 0.0
300 -6.4
400 -18.8
500 -38.2

The 7mm will print:

100 1.4
200 0.0
300 -6.3
400 -18.3
500 -36.9

Will a deer or moose or antelope or elk tell the difference between these two? Probably not. Will you notice a difference between these two? On paper, not a chance. In recoil, well the 7mm uses 65 grains of powder, and the .270 only uses 55. So yeah, the 7mm will recoil more and have a louder blast. Will the 7mm do everything the .30-06 will but faster and better? I'm not sure how it will do that when it won't do anything a .270 will do better. Really will any animal you or I may hunt with a .270 or a .30-06 know the difference? Again, not a chance. Both cartridges when using good bullets are both capable of anything we could ever ask. I once traded a handgun for an FN Mauser in .270 with a 3X Weaver scope from an old fellow for my girlfriend. He used that rifle for everything, including grizzly bears. He still had all his skin to show for it too. The end result is you need to choose what rifle you like best, and don't worry about the cartridges. Either will treat you just fine.

this is really intersting but you also have to look at down range energy. the 7mm rem mag shooting 154 gr bullets has a higher down range energy than a 270 shooting any grain of bullet (hornady website) and more energy than any 06 bullet (hornady website) comparing at 500 yards. but what can I say Im a 7 mag guy. Do I lecture and shake my head at people that buy 270's and 06's ? hell no. They have all been around forever for a reason. and the argument between the 3 will finaly be over when the world suddenly implodes!

 

[Demonical]

thats bold without any back up but I guess the same could be said about mine

LeftyM77 I make that statement because over the years the ammo companies have reduced the loads on the 7RemMag. It does not achieve the book velocities unless you handload. Since the vast majority of hunters do not handload, then much of the 7RM is theoretical BS, cuz all the books still cite the original specs.

I've told this story umpteen times but here it is again.

I had a buddy show up at our gun range with a brand new M-700 LSS in 7RemMag. I was shooting handloaded 165gr Hornady BTSP in my .30-06, he had factory Hornady 162gr BTSP. We had been shooting for a while and he asked if I wanted to try out his rifle, I said, "Sure what the hell..."
And since I had my Chrony set up I fired 5 rounds through it.

My 165gr handloads averaged 2850fps MV. His 162gr factory stuff averaged 2780fps. He was shocked! He believed the hype and figured his bullets were going to be something around 3,000fps.

So bottomline is, if you handload the 7RemMag, then it will beat the .30-06. But let's face it, it beats it by very little. For all practical purposes the tracjectories of the 2 are so close that worrying about a couple of inches in trajectory or theoretical footpounds energy is just a waste of time.
The deer at the receiving end of either will be just as dead.

 

[mackillan]

LeftyM77 I make that statement because over the years the ammo companies have reduced the loads on the 7RemMag. It does not achieve the book velocities unless you handload. Since the vast majority of hunters do not handload, then much of the 7RM is theoretical BS, cuz all the books still cite the original specs.

I've told this story umpteen times but here it is again.

I had a buddy show up at our gun range with a brand new M-700 LSS in 7RemMag. I was shooting handloaded 165gr Hornady BTSP in my .30-06, he had factory Hornady 162gr BTSP. We had been shooting for a while and he asked if I wanted to try out his rifle, I said, "Sure what the hell..."
And since I had my Chrony set up I fired 5 rounds through it.

My 165gr handloads averaged 2850fps MV. His 162gr factory stuff averaged 2780fps. He was shocked! He believed the hype and figured his bullets were going to be something around 3,000fps.

So bottomline is, if you handload the 7RemMag, then it will beat the .30-06. But let's face it, it beats it by very little. For all practical purposes the tracjectories of the 2 are so close that worrying about a couple of inches in trajectory or theoretical footpounds energy is just a waste of time.
The deer at the receiving end of either will be just as dead.

Wouldnt the 7mm mag have the advantages of BOTH the 270 and the 30-06? I see your point though. Ive seen many moose go down with a 30-06. Reaching out to shoot Muleys on the bald praire wouldnt you prefer a 270 or a 7mm mag?

 

[mackillan]

I'd say that's why the 270 is so popular. It approximates magnum performance w/o all the magnum benefits like heavier rifles, more expensive ammo, recoil etc. I wouldn't trade my 270 for a 7Mag, but I might trade it for a 280.



.

I honestly dont get the kick thing. When I was 14 I bought a remington wingmaster 12 guage and a Remington 30-06 gamemaster pump. I never used recoil pads and I was a skinny lil pup. A 30-06 gets you in the game in the bush. With 175 grains Ive dropped moose elk deep bear with one shot. Most were easy shots but they went down pronto. Maybe the key is living at the range and in the bush. We talk about recoil but a 10 guage 3 incher seems much worse in my opinion as you are often shooting upward without a solid plant

 

[mackillan]

Note the word "slight". I'm trying to agree with you here but just stating that the larger diameter of the heavier bullet would "slightly" limit its penetration compared to the lighter bullet. I agree, in a moose, it would be meaningless but in a test medium, the "slight" difference can be measured! It's simple physics.....a larger diameter object requires more force to move through the test medium than and smaller diameter one....all other variables being equal of course! More surface area equals more friction. Friction equals deceleration. Deceleration equals less penetration.

One tine man names screwy Louis was living on top of a telephone pole for charity. He threw Canady down for the kids. He hit me on the bean with a jawbreaker and I had a goose egg. Imagine if he had thrown a jawbreaker the size of a watermelon

 

[Gatehouse]

Wouldnt the 7mm mag have the advantages of BOTH the 270 and the 30-06? ?

Yup...That is why the 7mmRM is better than both of them, at least on a theoretical basis..

 

[Boomer]

Wouldnt the 7mm mag have the advantages of BOTH the 270 and the 30-06? I see your point though. Ive seen many moose go down with a 30-06. Reaching out to shoot Muleys on the bald praire wouldnt you prefer a 270 or a 7mm mag?

While I have my personal prejudices and preferences, minimal differences in bore size doesn't matter much compared to bullet design and construction. Of the three, the .270, 7 mag, or the .30/06, a good handloader can make any one of them match the performance of any other, provided he can find an appropriate bullet. While there are those who will disagree, I believe that it is a mistake to make a big game rifle too specialized, and the real strength of of these cartridges is that they all work well under a broad range of circumstances. If you can't do it with one, you probably can't do it with another.

 

[pharaoh2]

this is really intersting but you also have to look at down range energy. the 7mm rem mag shooting 154 gr bullets has a higher down range energy than a 270 shooting any grain of bullet (hornady website) and more energy than any 06 bullet (hornady website) comparing at 500 yards.

Well fortunatly I think guys who shoot at 500 yards are just plain silly. Even 400 is too far for me. 300 with a good rest maybe. That's why it's called hunting not shooting, get closer.

I don't pay much attention to energy either. Your bullet may have 4000 ft pounds of energy according to a ballistic table (Hornady website) but if you think about it, wouldn't 4000 pounds pick up a deer and knock him clean into the next county? These numbers are too decieving and give shooters false information. The old standby is 1000-1100 FT pounds for a deer at your impact range. Right? Lets go back a 140 years...


The late 1800's were the days of the buffalo hunters with their ultra long range, big bore rifles. Cartridges like the .45-70, .45-90, or any of the Sharpes cartridges are great examples. These cartridges look awesome just by their shear size and nobody these days would even think of saying any of them are not powerful enough to shoot anything we have to hunt. But, look at their energy levels on tables; Our standby, the .45-70 shouldn't be able to kill a deer much past 100 yards, and nobody should even think about hunting an elk or a moose with one as it doesn't have the kinetic energy at any range that our modern cartridges produce out to several hundred yards. Yet the buffalo hunters routinely killed bison at ranges I would never consider shooting. And they did it with rainbow tradgectories to boot.

How is it then that these old cartridges were and are still able to do the job? Well obviously it's because they were invented prior to ballistics charts. Had they come along after, they would habe been deemed obsolite by the 3000+ FPS crowd. But also it goes to show that downrange energy is over rated. Theoretical energy of several tons would, if it were real, have the power to move massive objects. It doesn't happen. Now you may say that a bullet can't dump it's energy in a deer to knock it around because it may go through first. Nope, watch this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bvbsWTCovCE
I made this bullet trap out of wet phonebooks. It weighed 50 or 60 pounds I guess. The bullet barely caused the bucket to move, and I recovered the bullet on the last book. For a 3/4 or so ton of energy, it doesn't look too impressive, does it?

What you need is a rifle that you can shoot comfortably and accuratly. It has to be a rifle that you like in order for you to enjoy it. It has to be of a cartridge legal for the game you hunt, accurate enough so your happy in the end and it has to shoot a good bullet. Premium quality bullets are what join the gaps between these fine cartridges. Obviously the higher the weight of the overall bullet contributes to the final on game performance. That's why we use bigger rifles for bigger game. Bigger bullets are built stronger, are likely to penetrate deeper and do as much damage as possible. But then we have the wild cards there as well. A 6.5 bullet is very long and very lean. They are famous for their penetration. In fact, I would say it's possible for that little bullet to out penetrate alot of bullets from the bigger and heavier bullets. That's why they have such a strong following here and abroad. Load a good bullet in a 6.5 somthing and heck, lets go to Jurassic Park!

 

[SuperCub]

I honestly dont get the kick thing.

My point was that for the most part a "magnum" will give more recoil than a standard chambering.

Maybe the key is living at the range and in the bush.

What does that have to do with how much recoil a rifle delivers? I don't live at the range or in the bush and I shot a 7600 w/o a recoil pad for years.



.

 

[deadeyedyck]

dirty odd six

Does it all.

Don't think about it too much. They are both gonna kill.

270 can kill big animals. 30-06 can kill big animals.

do you reload?

factory:
270 with those 130 are a great match.
30-06 with either 150 or 165 are a great match.

 

[Demonical]

Wouldnt the 7mm mag have the advantages of BOTH the 270 and the 30-06? I see your point though. Ive seen many moose go down with a 30-06. Reaching out to shoot Muleys on the bald praire wouldnt you prefer a 270 or a 7mm mag?

I do not have a 7RM. I do have a .270. Given the choice between a .270 or a .30-06, I would take the .30-06 no question. It shoots just as flat and delivers a bigger bullet.

I shot a decent buck with the .270 a few years ago and I didn't like the tiny holes through the (dead) deer. Maybe that was due to a combination of things; I used a 140gr Nosler Accubond and the range was a bit over 200 yards. So maybe that's why the bullet didn't expand much and produce a bigger wound? I'm not sure. I've thought about it and maybe a simple 130gr Hornady Interlock would have opened up more.

The last 2 years my deer hunting rifle of choice is a .300H&H with 200gr Accubonds at a sedate 2700 fps. Man does that bullet ever pancake the bucks! It shoots almost as flat as the others. It's not really better then the '06, but it's sorta fun, in a nostalgic way.

IMHO you can hunt deer with pretty much any of the calibers from 7x57, .270Win, .280Rem, .308Win, .30-06, 7RM, or any of the .300mags, plus various short mags in those same caliber sizes and the most important difference is personal preference!

 

[Dogleg]

I've had a a few 30-06s and a few more 270s. If anything the .270 always seemed to kill faster with the 130 grain bullets than the '06 did with the 180s. Either way both worked, and I never could tell any diffence between the recoil of the two. I prefer the .270 velocity with the '06 bullet diameter and weight, and can have it all in the .300 Win Mag.

 

[H4831]

I have had (or have) 3, 30-06s and 2, 270s. I fully agree with the people that say ballistic tables are very much over done. After the war when ballistic tables became popular, a favourite saying of the old timers was that a sheet of paper didn't kill game, my rifle does!
In the 1960s the variable scopes of the day had the cross hairs appearing larger, as the power of the scope was increased. I had a theory worked out on my Redfield 2 to 7 power for estimating range by how much the post covered.
On the flat alpine mesa of the Atlin district, in far northern BC, a very patient bull caribou stood sideways to me, while I used my make-shift scope arrangement to estimate the range. I guessed how wide his lower leg would be, how high the ears, how far from back to brisket, and so on. The range had to be 400 yards a estimated. I tried to lay prone to shoot, but the grass was too high. So I wrapped the sling of My 270 Sako around my arm and used the sitting position with the elbows on the knees. I squeezed one off, using a hold for 400 yards. I heard the handloaded, standard 130 grain bullet hit hard. The bull turned around and put his other side to me. Another solid, whump, as that one hit and the caribou collapsed.
I have practiced pacing distance since I was a kid and I know how long my step is. I paced my way straight to the animal across the prairie and decided it was something like twenty yards farther than 400.
On this shot I think the 270 was maybe a bit better than a 30-06, but I have shot some very large moose, and for this the 30-06 is to be preferred.
So take your pick between the two, enjoy it and don't look back, either one will be fine.

 

[deadeyedyck]

Well said!

Don't look back either one will be fine!

 

[cbabes]

Excellent post! There have been a lot of grizzly killed with one shot of a 30-06. Nosler Ps!

Well fortunatly I think guys who shoot at 500 yards are just plain silly. Even 400 is too far for me. 300 with a good rest maybe. That's why it's called hunting not shooting, get closer.

I don't pay much attention to energy either. Your bullet may have 4000 ft pounds of energy according to a ballistic table (Hornady website) but if you think about it, wouldn't 4000 pounds pick up a deer and knock him clean into the next county? These numbers are too decieving and give shooters false information. The old standby is 1000-1100 FT pounds for a deer at your impact range. Right? Lets go back a 140 years...


The late 1800's were the days of the buffalo hunters with their ultra long range, big bore rifles. Cartridges like the .45-70, .45-90, or any of the Sharpes cartridges are great examples. These cartridges look awesome just by their shear size and nobody these days would even think of saying any of them are not powerful enough to shoot anything we have to hunt. But, look at their energy levels on tables; Our standby, the .45-70 shouldn't be able to kill a deer much past 100 yards, and nobody should even think about hunting an elk or a moose with one as it doesn't have the kinetic energy at any range that our modern cartridges produce out to several hundred yards. Yet the buffalo hunters routinely killed bison at ranges I would never consider shooting. And they did it with rainbow tradgectories to boot.

How is it then that these old cartridges were and are still able to do the job? Well obviously it's because they were invented prior to ballistics charts. Had they come along after, they would habe been deemed obsolite by the 3000+ FPS crowd. But also it goes to show that downrange energy is over rated. Theoretical energy of several tons would, if it were real, have the power to move massive objects. It doesn't happen. Now you may say that a bullet can't dump it's energy in a deer to knock it around because it may go through first. Nope, watch this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bvbsWTCovCE
I made this bullet trap out of wet phonebooks. It weighed 50 or 60 pounds I guess. The bullet barely caused the bucket to move, and I recovered the bullet on the last book. For a 3/4 or so ton of energy, it doesn't look too impressive, does it?

What you need is a rifle that you can shoot comfortably and accuratly. It has to be a rifle that you like in order for you to enjoy it. It has to be of a cartridge legal for the game you hunt, accurate enough so your happy in the end and it has to shoot a good bullet. Premium quality bullets are what join the gaps between these fine cartridges. Obviously the higher the weight of the overall bullet contributes to the final on game performance. That's why we use bigger rifles for bigger game. Bigger bullets are built stronger, are likely to penetrate deeper and do as much damage as possible. But then we have the wild cards there as well. A 6.5 bullet is very long and very lean. They are famous for their penetration. In fact, I would say it's possible for that little bullet to out penetrate alot of bullets from the bigger and heavier bullets. That's why they have such a strong following here and abroad. Load a good bullet in a 6.5 somthing and heck, lets go to Jurassic Park!