7mm-08 vs 270, some thoughts

[Journeyman]

That makes sense on RL26...them slow burning powders always get the high velocities. I will definitely add 270 to the loading bench. I also have a 26" #1 contour 270 barrel on order from Kreiger, which will arrive too late for this year, but my plan for this winter was to build a 270 that got near 7mag velocities. I'm guessing that RL26 load out of a 26" will be a screamer.

And i may eventually give that 7mm-08 load a try. 2850 is pretty hot coming out of a 16" barrel...

As for scopes, 8-10x will be fine out to 500 or 600. To my mind the bigger issue than the scope is that once yer planning to shoot past 400 (or even at 300 with a stiff full value wind) wind really starts to push bullets out of the kill zone so it's just making sure you get enough trigger time in windy stuff to be able to make good calls. Some kind of reticle with holdover points to the left and right (i generally use a mil reticle or some variation of it, though it doesn't matter, as long as you practice with it).

What about running a 140 accubond or something out of your Kimber? Prob a more reliable long range killer, though you'd definitely give up that super sweet 330 yard MPBR...

I actually used to load 130 grain accubonds for my '08 model 70 in 270 short mag. That was an extremely accurate combo but I had feed issues with it that was resolved after sending it back to Winchester so long as I didn't seat the bullets out to the lands. That kinda turned me off to the WSM deal so I went to a straight 270.

As for the 110 grain TTSX's I've shot 2 deer with them and my brother has shot 1 since putting our 2 rifles together, both shooting the same load. The combination of the bullet and high velocities combined for devestating effects though all the shots were high vitals and knocked out the CNS. I'd have no issue taking any north american game with the rifle and load so long as the range was inside of that 400 yards.

I don't know why I have a thing for Barnes stuff but I've considered the 129 grain LRX's as the BC is pretty high but I'd almost rather put another rifle together for a different purpose. Do you have any opinions on that bullet? The thing that scares me off the barnes stuff is the bullet not expanding enough at longer ranges.

I like your idea to get a mil-dot scope and pair it with a longer range mountain rifle. I've never liked the idea of a big scope with turrets on a mountain rifle for myself. At this point I'm not experienced enough to be taking shots in heavy wind beyond 2-300 yards at game but I'd like to dig into it a little more and develop some skill in that area.

 

[ATX762]

The Barnes stuff is great until it gets below its expansion threshold. Which is farther than most people shoot anyway, obviously. But if yer thinking you want to reach out farther, then yeah time to go back to lead.

Any kind of shooting is a perishable skill, shooting in the wind is maybe an even more perishable skill, and shooting in the wind when it's a different climate/temperature/vegetation than what you're used to is just well...getting more complicated.

If you know you're not going to shoot past 400-ish, I see no reason to change your load. But if you think you might, then I'd work up something that you know will give you some fragmentation/expansion past 400. Find a load that prints well, then load 500-1000 of them, and find yourself a proper range and start shooting. That really is the only way you learn to shoot in the wind--a case of ammo and a few days on the range. It's expensive but there really isn't a substitute.

And yeah you don't *technically* need mil-dots or mil-hashes or Moa hashes etc...but in reality, yeah you actually do. You need to have a sense of, oh, okay, this shot feels like 2 and a half mils right windage, this feels like a mil of left windage, etc. And movers are another thing, you need more lead than you think, even for a target at a slow walk.

For shooting movers the most efficient way to learn is go to a shooting school that has a setup for movers, which most do. It's pretty mind blowing to get out at 500-600 and once you start trusting your leads, you can bang tiny little plates that are moving along at 5 mph. What's more mind-blowing is the amount of lead you need.

Anyway...if yer super into getting good at this, might be worth looking at a long range school. I've done a few of them...could probably do one or two a year every year for the rest of my life and never stop improving.

But as for just learning the wind, it's literally just bring a shitton of ammo, get yourself 600 or more yards, and start banging away. You can shoot closer than 600 yards, but unless you've got a spotter the whole time, or perfect shooting form, or a muzzle brake, it's usually pretty hard to recover from recoil and get your scope back on the target in time to see your bullet splash. So, strangely enough, it's easier to learn at 600 than at 400. With a lightweight hunting rifle, shooting at 400 yards, the bullet will likely have impacted the target area before you have time to get your scope back on to see it your hit or miss. And unless you can spot your bullet splash in real time...it's pretty tough to learn anything.

Hope that all makes sense...

 

[AK Troutbum]

I'll admit, I do find this all intriguing, but like you said, they both kill. And also, like you said, most folks don't kill things past 300 yards (I'm one of those folks), and the bottom line is, accuracy is everything. I would much rather be dead on accurate at 200 yards, With a 130 gr. bullet traveling 2600 ft./s then shooting, inaccurately, a bullet of the same weight traveling faster. I'm just saying, I think too much emphasis is placed on bullet velocity and foot pounds of energy. Accuracy, in my opinion, is much more important.


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[Journeyman]

I'll admit, I do find this all intriguing, but like you said, they both kill. And also, like you said, most folks don't kill things past 300 yards (I'm one of those folks), and the bottom line is, accuracy is everything. I would much rather be dead on accurate at 200 yards, With a 130 gr. bullet traveling 2600 ft./s then shooting, inaccurately, a bullet of the same weight traveling faster. I'm just saying, I think too much emphasis is placed on bullet velocity and foot pounds of energy. Accuracy, in my opinion, is much more important.


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I used to think along the same lines as you but after having a deer that I shot through the heart and a second shot through the neck at 300 yards and then it still ran another 100 yards into thick manzanita and having to track and find that deer I got interested in what makes those drop em in their tracks kills.

After lots of research I found this article, it's long but definitely worth a read.

Effective Game Killing

That's when I got the Kimber and put the hot load together. The last gun was a pre-64 model 70 in 270 and I was shooting factory Hornady rounds with interlocks I think. It killed the deer but I had to track him through that nasty manzanita and if he made it much further he would have ran off a cliff.

ATX762, thanks for all that info. I know taking those long shots at an animal isn't something to be taken lightly. I'm going to put some more research in on calibers and it'll probably be next year before I do it but I think I'll put a gun together for longer range.

Not to get off topic to much but I was researching ballistics between the 7-08 and the 6.5 creedmore and with a 120 grain bullet in each, they were pretty even ballistically out to 800 but with less powder burned in the creedmore and with its higher BC started to take over after that. That's with Nosler load data.

 

[GKPrice]

out to 300-350 it really doesn't make much difference, accuracy and good shooting count most

It seems that deer and antelope will often make that death dash (50-100 yds) when heart struck - Elk will fold to a high shoulder/low CNS hit when it seems like it might have been an otherwise slightly "off" hit
Heart muscle is unlike any other muscle tissue, it's soft and cannot be depended upon to provide enough resistance to expand a bullet

 

[7rem]

I've had a few of each , but would choose the 7-08 first out of the two. Had a finnlite that shot 120ttsx at 3175 fps with cfe223 and a 20.5" bbl it was awesome. Traded it off on ridgeline 7-08that will do 3200 fps with 120 gr bullets but the load I'm going to use is 150eldx at 2900fps with RL 17. It has been verified 5 times now to 500 yards and every time it has shot 2.5"-3"
3 shot groups.
I would pick the 7-08 any day.
I had a hard time getting close to 3100fps with 270 and 130 gr bullets.

 

[ATX762]

To fully geek out on this, I was reading Ken Water's Pet Loads last night, a great book by a big shooter and hunter that gives a ton of historical load data (real and still sometimes useful load data from the 70's and 80's but giving a great history of most of the cartridges he talks about going back to the early 1900's)...

Point being, writing back the 1970's, Ken Waters was mentioning that even with hot hand loads he had a hard time matching the original 270 load of 130gr at 3150 fps, at least out of a 22" barrel. In the article, as a baseline, he chronographs all the big 3 makers (Federal Remington Winchester) 130grain factory 270 loads...One was like 2950 fps and the other two barely broke 3000 fps out of a 22 inch barrel.

Fast forward 40 years and the factory 270 loads have gotten between 100 fps and 150 fps slower than they were in the 1970's.

Of course bullets have gotten better...so maybe killing power has stayed the same.

And mebbe I need to get off my lazy arse and start loading for the 7-08 as well. You guys are all giving some really screaming numbers here.

Journeyman...that is interesting on the 6.5. I've shot a fair bit of 6.5 on the long range, where it just decimates the 308 in terms of wind holds (308 175 SMKs are what I normally shoot on the long range, bc match 308 ammo is too cheap and I'm too lazy to load for 308). The 6.5 felt like a 1/3 less wind hold than you'd hold for a 175grain SMK. That is just huge, in terms of practical shoot ability...

But I guess cause I've got all these other calibers to mess with, I haven't really given the 6.5 much thought as anything other than a target round. I think a lot of other folks on here can comment on the 6.5 in terms of shooting animals.

 

[N2TRKYS]

My 22" factory barreled 270 Win shoots 140 grain factory ammo around 2950 fps. Never shot 130s, so I don't know what it shoots.

 

[ATX762]

Would you mind sharing what load that is? Cause I would like to buy some! That's faster than ALL of the big 3 loaded 130grain loads I've shot out of two different 22" barreled rifles.

 

[GKPrice]

To fully geek out on this, I was reading Ken Water's Pet Loads last night, a great book by a big shooter and hunter that gives a ton of historical load data (real and still sometimes useful load data from the 70's and 80's but giving a great history of most of the cartridges he talks about going back to the early 1900's)...

Point being, writing back the 1970's, Ken Waters was mentioning that even with hot hand loads he had a hard time matching the original 270 load of 130gr at 3150 fps, at least out of a 22" barrel. In the article, as a baseline, he chronographs all the big 3 makers (Federal Remington Winchester) 130grain factory 270 loads...One was like 2950 fps and the other two barely broke 3000 fps out of a 22 inch barrel.

Fast forward 40 years and the factory 270 loads have gotten between 100 fps and 150 fps slower than they were in the 1970's.

Of course bullets have gotten better...so maybe killing power has stayed the same.

And mebbe I need to get off my lazy arse and start loading for the 7-08 as well. You guys are all giving some really screaming numbers here.

Journeyman...that is interesting on the 6.5. I've shot a fair bit of 6.5 on the long range, where it just decimates the 308 in terms of wind holds (308 175 SMKs are what I normally shoot on the long range, bc match 308 ammo is too cheap and I'm too lazy to load for 308). The 6.5 felt like a 1/3 less wind hold than you'd hold for a 175grain SMK. That is just huge, in terms of practical shoot ability...

But I guess cause I've got all these other calibers to mess with, I haven't really given the 6.5 much thought as anything other than a target round. I think a lot of other folks on here can comment on the 6.5 in terms of shooting animals.

I would have to agree with you on the "classic" 270 handloads but I was looking through Alliant's published data for all their new powders and had to do a double take on that particular combo (they don't say if they use pressure barrels or actual hunting rifles that I've read), it's right there in black and white - That said, the old standbys have been killing critters nonstop during all of the chatter about getting another 50-100 fps -
As for the 6.5 CM, not long ago I was arguing with guys over the 243 shooting elk and now I've turned a corner and I'm pretty pumped over that little 6.5 - Nice thing that a guy can change his mind and not get "beat up" over it ........Have yet to kill anything breathing with it though so a season and some kills will certainly tell more

 

[ATX762]

I mean...yeah. People were killing elk with stone-tipped spears and atl-atls, then self-bows, then flintlock smoothbores, then percussion cap rifles.

So am I arguing that 200 fps really means a whole lot? ...no. It really is more of a long range shooting/academic discussion/what common calibers actually shoot close to their factory advertised velocity discussion. Academic for sure. Just again surprising to find that my supposedly weaker and much shorter and lighter and smaller 7mm-08's keep up almost identically with my 270's in factory off the shelf loads.

 

[hodgeman]

Winchester has a long history of fluffing their ballistic data on cartridge introductions. While I agree the accuracy and good bullets kill animals... velocity sells new rifles (at least for the last 75 years or so).

 

[kcm2]

The Hornady 130 GMX Superformance out of a 20" bbl 270 comes out at 3144. At least for me, that's plenty. And more than I've ever thought a 7-08 can do.

 

[ATX762]

Yeah the 130 superformance SST's for me got like 3130 or something out of my 22" Maybe a few more fps even, can't remember off the top of my head, but definitely in that range. Might be the only factory load that is (or that I have shot that is).

How are those GMX's? I read internet ninja talk that they fouled barrels but...I read it on the inter webs and have no experience myself...

 

[N2TRKYS]

Would you mind sharing what load that is? Cause I would like to buy some! That's faster than ALL of the big 3 loaded 130grain loads I've shot out of two different 22" barreled rifles.

It was Hornady 140 grain SST(pre Superformance). I've got some Remington 130 grain Sirroco, but forgot what the velocity was.

 

[KINGSNAKE]

Such a true statement Hodgeman.