Why does the 6.5 Creedmoor Crowd claim the 143 ELD-X as the Bullet that Beats the .270 Winchester?

sage5907 said:

In the past the 270 Winchester owners were always a little touchy with any criticism about their rifles. After following this thread it appears that the 6.5 CM owners are just as quick to take up a defensive position.

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The 6.5CM owners however have the advantage of a well designed cartridge. The .270 owners are sensitive because it's junk and has been from day one. Wrong diameter, wrong twist, wrong shoulder angle, wrong neck length, wrong taper. The only thing right about it is the high SAAMI MAP. After years of defending the indefensible, you can only expect .270 folks to be a sensitive, undies-twisted bunch

I'm agreeing with post #95... if I wanted a 6.5, whether CM or x55, I'd be thinking of 18-24" of medium weight barrel and a good set of aperture sights. Also, a nice compact hunter type stock. I'd be looking to balance carried weight and recoil, and considering range/trajectory where I hunt...

There's no shortage of salesmen and marketing people more than happy to spend your money for you. I can think of several new production rifles I might actually like if they'd sell me the barreled action... I'd then choose the stock and sight system. But then they wouldn't get to sell exactly the package they want everybody to buy.

...but, now-older .243's and .270's, among others, will handle it just fine.

I own both 270 and 6.5. Love the 270 but the 6.5 is the best shooting rifle I have. I like em both. Killed deer with the 270, will with the 6.5 this deer season God willing.

If I can catch the deer before it's last breath I'll ask if it could tell it got hit my a 6.5 instead of 270....

LoonWulf said:

I'm tempted to bash the .243, haven't had that fight recently lol.

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Don’t. It would be impolite to pick on women, children and men of small stature.

Nature Boy said:

Don’t. It would be impolite to pick on women, children and men of small stature.

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Ha! I’m not a big guy by any stretch, but I moonlighted as a bouncer for 4 years in undergrad and grad school at one of the busier bars in a big college town. I used to warn guys who were “less than compliant” with the same tired line: “God made me small so it would be more embarrassing for you when I kick your @ss.” Instant reminder for them - nobody wants to get beaten up by a little guy, and nobody’s gonna be impressed if you alternatively beat up the little guy either, so it’s largely a lose-lose. Worked MOST of the time.

I did, however, get reminded a few times, of exactly how many guys it does take to kick mine, and I learned two truths: 1) in each instance it was a far smaller number than I would have liked for it to be, and 2) they brought at least one more than necessary. Oh to be young again...

I don't understand the hate towards any cartridge, but here, in this thread, the .270 Winchester bashing is surprisingly ferocious. To say it is this wrong while showing such a glorious hunting record defies common sense. Maybe it was not designed for target shooting the whole afternoon every Saturday. People had .22 LR back in the old days to do that!

You know, there must be something wrong with my computer. I looked up the Remington 700 and noticed that the 6.5 CM rifles and the 270 Winchester rifles were both selling at the same price. Then I looked up the Winchester 70 and the 6.5 CM and the 270 Winchester rifles were both selling at the same price. I would have thought the new CM rifles would be much more expensive.

Don't miss CptnAwesome, after being used to shooting the .270 Win you will have developed a horrible flinch. Along with less drop and less wind drift with the CM, you might out of instinct hold too high and into the wind. Remember, your now shooting a lazer beam, not a .270 rainbow that you were using.

I was lucky enough to knock down a deer with each. The 6.5CM buck was DRT but the .270 Win buck was still alive. He just wouldn't stop laughing long enough to answer if he could tell which I was shooting. All he said was inefficient garbage, so idk?

Good luck

sage5907 said:

You know, there must be something wrong with my computer. I looked up the Remington 700 and noticed that the 6.5 CM rifles and the 270 Winchester rifles were both selling at the same price. Then I looked up the Winchester 70 and the 6.5 CM and the 270 Winchester rifles were both selling at the same price. I would have thought the new CM rifles would be much more expensive.

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Same price - but one USED to be one of the top 3 selling chamberings, while one now IS the top selling chambering for most US rifle brands...

There is hope for the 270 after all. My friend who shoots long range precision competition has a new 270 rifle that uses 300 Norma cases, has a 277 bore, uses 170 grain Hornady bullets, and velocity, BC and SD are all higher than the 6.5 bullets. Hope this doesn't upset anyone.

that just can,t be true, nothing is better than a 6.5 cm. well one day the 6.5 cm will be old, feeble and long in the tooth and upset by a new wonder case. don,t get upset, its just nature of things.

Frostbite said:

I don't understand the hate towards any cartridge, but here, in this thread, the .270 Winchester bashing is surprisingly ferocious. To say it is this wrong while showing such a glorious hunting record defies common sense. Maybe it was not designed for target shooting the whole afternoon every Saturday. People had .22 LR back in the old days to do that!

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I shoot 270 and I think problem is they don't want to look at another case that offers match bullets in short action. they pick case with more recoil that doesn't shoot match bullets and is on long action so weight more. They can't be experts on 6.5CM with pointing to the 270 and they do all these test to prove. Like little kid need to get attention.

eastbank said:

that just can,t be true, nothing is better than a 6.5 cm. well one day the 6.5 cm will be old, feeble and long in the tooth and upset by a new wonder case. don,t get upset, its just nature of things.

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Well that may be true, but if so it will be because of an advance in case design. The .270 isn't headed out because of fashion, but rather because decisions that were made in the -03 case design have hampered the entire lineage and the .270 is no exception. They were questionable decisions for a military round then, and have not aged well - for a hunting round now they simply make no sense.

So if the 6.5CM is replaced by another cartridge, it will be because there have been meaningful advances in case design and that's a good thing. I don't think that's likely anytime soon (there don't seem to be any improvements in case design on the horizon), but it would be great if it happened.

Llama Bob said:

Well that may be true, but if so it will be because of an advance in case design. The .270 isn't headed out because of fashion, but rather because decisions that were made in the -03 case design have hampered the entire lineage and the .270 is no exception. They were questionable decisions for a military round then, and have not aged well - for a hunting round now they simply make no sense.

So if the 6.5CM is replaced by another cartridge, it will be because there have been meaningful advances in case design and that's a good thing. I don't think that's likely anytime soon (there don't seem to be any improvements in case design on the horizon), but it would be great if it happened.

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I don’t even have a dog in this fight to defend. But that doesn’t mean the 270 is “junk”. My favorite rifle cartridges are “junk” by modern standards. Just by even 270 standards. Yet year after year I fill freezers with them.

Garandimal said:

Why don't you tell us how you Really feel about the .270 Winchester.

This is what P.O. Ackley... thought:​

​

"...But the 270 Winchester Ackley Improved was a different story altogether,
another customer request that resulted in a wildcat inferior to the standard cartridge.

P.O. wrote that the standard 270 was already "over- bore,"
so a 40-degree shoulder with minimum taper couldn't offer much improvement, if any."

P.O. ACKLEY FIREFORM IMPROVED WILDCATS FROM CURRENT FACTORY CARTRIDGES
Cartridge - Performance Gain over Factory - Ackley Comments
.
.
.
270 Win.Ack.Imp. - Little or none with more powder - Not recommended, factory 270 is better
.
.
.
​

GR

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I think that might change if Ackley had access to some of the powders available today. He felt a number of the Imps were already so overbore, that they were not worth improving.
If i remember correctly, the best option for that class of overbore cartridge were the 4831s, or perhaps even the 4350s.

Personally i prefer the Gibbs to the Ackleys, simply because almost all of the 06 based cartridges have kinda long necks (IMO), and the .270s are longer than the rest.

Again its all academic, they all do just fine for nearly anything you could ask of them.
I do feel the 277s got short changed on the twist. But since they WERE ment to deliver relatively light bullets at very high velocity, and shooting long, heavy VLD type bullets is a relatively recent phenomenon, I cant really fault the design for that.
This dosent mean I wont fix that issue, and use a magnum case, if i ever get around to building a .277 bore rifle.

Comparing the 120-130 class, 6.5 projectiles to the 140-147 class, dosent change a whole lot when were talking about deer imo.
BUT you do get about 150fps more velocity, and adequate penetration, so it might be worth swapping down, Ive certainly considered it. If i didnt load for a 6.5-284 as well as my 6.5CM I think id probably shoot 120 class bullets exclusively, but I prefer more weight in the x284.

I think I,ll drive my .270,s and other out dated rifles down to the old folks home for useless rifles to enjoy their last days sitting in a rocking chair watching the sun set on them one last time. and give in to the new wiper snapper and buy a 6.5cm as I,ll only need one set of dies to load my mice to moose new rifle.

Garandimal said:

This is what P.O. Ackley... thought:​

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And of course we now know he was wrong. Improvement affects the .270 the same as every other cartridge. There's nothing special about the bad design of the .270. It's just like all the other bad designs of the era - readily improved.

LoonWulf said:

I think that might change if Ackley had access to some of the powders available today. He felt a number of the Imps were already so overbore, that they were not worth improving.

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Of course. He also had no way to measure pressure, so his data is full of errors. We know for example that improvement does wonders for the .280, only .007 away in bore diameter. The situation with the .270 is no different. It's what a D- in cartridge design looks like and ripe for improvement

its like the weather in Alaska, wait 20 minutes and it will change.

I have no intention of knocking the 270 even though I've never hunted with one. Back in 1974 when 16 and I had saved up enough money to buy my 1st rifle by mowing neighbors yards I was torn between 270, 308,and 30-06. I drove over to my scout master home to ask his opinion. I knew he was an experienced hunter, my dad was not. He simply said, "follow me". We went to a storage building behind his home where he opened a wooden military footlocker full of military surplus 30-06 machine gun ammo still on the belts. He pulled off about a 10' section and gave it to me and said "when you shoot this up come back for more". That is how I decided on 30-06. And under the circumstances it was the right choice.

For years I was one of those guys who was convinced 30-06 was soooo much better than 270. But as I got older and wiser have decided that at worst they are equals and a strong argument can be made that 270 is better. And as I've gotten older I've also come to the conclusion that both are really more gun than I need 95% of the time. I made the change to 308 about 10 years ago and just recently decided to see what the 6.5 noise was all about. I think it lives up to the hype. It isn't magical, but it kills stuff. There are more potent cartridges, but you don't get bonus points for killing something deader.

There's nothing special about the bad design of the .270. It's just the all the other bad designs of the era.

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I wouldn't call them bad designs. They were very good designs for the time and the type of bullets available at the time. The 270, 260, 25-06, and several others were designed with lightweight, relatively short hunting bullets in mind. The idea at the time was that lightweight bullets at high speed would shoot flatter and kill faster. And used within their design parameters it is hard to argue that they don't work. Today, at least partially because a lot more people are shooting paper than game the long heavy high BC bullets are more popular and those,and other cartridges struggle with those bullets. Manufacturers COULD design rifles in those cartridges to work better with these bullets. But it is just easier to develop a new cartridge and rifles for them.

The 270 is still an excellent hunting cartridge. And capable of good accuracy. Not the most efficient cartridge in the world but that doesn't mean it won't print small groups or put down medium sized game.

The explosion of the 6.5 CM has been driven by the world of long range competition where guys are reaching out to 1200-1400 yards and efficiency, barrel life, and ballistic coefficient are all very important.

Rifle manufacturers are offering deer hunting rifles in 6.5 which is excellent news because it has pushed popularity to the point that ammo and unloaded cases are widely available.

I certainly wouldn't call the 270 Winchester junk, nor would I claim that the 6.5 is a better hunting cartridge. But the 6.5 is clearly a better cartridge for PRS competition.

I like how a bad decision from the parent case waaaaay back in 1903 is making the 270 Win be on its way out but still in 2019 it's one of the top hunting cartridges out there. Taking it a long time to lose favor huh?

I've heard the bad design, wrong caliber, wrong twist rate arguments all my life and have yet to understand them. It's a hunting cartridge, plain and simple. Designed for normal hunting ranges of 300yds and in and was made popular by taking light-medium weight bullets and shooting them fast and flat in these ranges with plenty of energy to expand and kill small to large animals. It's done a helluva job at this for nearly 100yrs all over the planet so because of the success it's stayed not only relevant but in the top elite cartridges even now. From 90gr Speer TNT's on crows and coyotes to 160gr NP's and 180gr Woodleigh Weldcores for deer and elk, it does exactly what was intended very well. Well enough mind you, it's taken on all comers in the "correct bore size and/or correct twist rates" and eaten them all alive. Imagine what the 260Rem, 7mm-08, 280Rem, etc could've been had the .270 Win not existed. P.O Akley could not improve it, and MR Jack O'Connor swore by it. Saying the .270Win is not a very good hunting round is like telling me breathing air is bad, I know better from an entire life of experience. Are there better rounds, maybe. There should be with the technology we have but with the odd bore size and old tech the 270win should've faded away long ago but didn't. It does it's job too well.

With all of that said, this is more of a troll job. People deliberately stirring posters up and purposefully and even admittedly trying to get this thread shut down by being condescending and saying spiteful things to get knee jerk reactions. I guess it's ok to do such things here on THR for certain posters? Like what you like and respect what others like and it is possible to give a negative opinion of a cartridge without being a jerk and calling it trash or garbage. Just FYI

A few things I’ve noticed that ought to stop:

The “more recoil is manly” argument. Not every shooter is a man. I’ve seen those “funny” videos of “men” giving an unsuspecting woman or child a big boomer to shoot and laughing about it. It isn’t funny. It also isn’t an argument for shooting .270

The original OP’s “Why does the 6.5CM crowd...” stop. Sweeping over generalizations using the straw man defense aren’t credible. If such a statement has been written then reference it with the author’s name.

Statements about throwing away your .270; really? Shoot it till it won’t group to your need then rebarrel it in a suitable caliber for you. That might even be... .270

I don’t care how many sheep or deer or even elk your .270 has killed. That doesn’t make it ideal by virtue of “proof”. Thousands of deer are killed by traffic every year which does not lead us to conclude a Chevy is the ideal tool for harvesting mid-size animals. I’m stuck by law using a muzzleloader where I would much prefer my 6.5s Heck I’d be happy to hunt with a .270 but I can’t and you won’t hear me make the case that my old technology beats the .270 or 6.5s because it’s been doing it for hundreds of years.

The market is driving 6.5CM which is no better than 6.5Swede? Ok. If that’s what’s on the shelf with the full support of rifle, bullet, and ammo manufacturers then who cares? I didn’t own any flavor of rifle shooting .264 5 years ago and so I had more options when I finally bought. I had planned on adding a Swede at some point but why on earth would I ever consider that now that I can purchase ammo for the Creedmoor at every sporting goods store in town?

I’m not interested in wasting time debating book performance of .270 vs 6.5, they both work for hunting, the x55 has proven that for as long as .270 which, thanks to this thread, we “know” is the same as Creedmoor.

The tongue in cheek insinuations that people are going to throw away their old antiquated (insert caliber here) are just stupid. Nobody cares what you shoot and we all know they are perfectly effective.

Lets drive this in another direction. Lets say you were advising a new young shooter that was looking to buy their first deer rifle, one that they intend to hunt with for many years and shoot 200 or 300 rounds a year at the range with to build skills. They have $600 to spend on a new rifle and optic and they don't handload. Can you think of a logical, non emotional argument, for why they should pick one over the other? I can think of a half dozen in favor of the 6.5c, but the only thing I can think of in favor of the 270 is slightly more muzzle energy. If we add elk to that scenario does your answer change?