Does anyone use the .270 Win for varmints. Would the 90 gr hollow point be a good long range bullet, or would it be too light? There is the 100 and 110 gr. Would they work in the neighborhood or 400 to 600 yards? Back-up to my 22-250.

Thanks.

To me, a 90 grain bullet seems a little heavy. I'm not familar with the .270 though. When I went out to Wyoming this past July, I used a .223 with a 55 grain ballistic tip. The other rifle I used was a .220 swift with a 60 grain ballistic tip. For prairie dogs, I would think that a .270 would be a little overkill, but probably perfect for yotes. Like I said before, I'm not familar with the .270, so I don't know what the ballistics are, or what weight bullets are readily available.

Cody

dakota1 wrote:

Does anyone use the .270 Win for varmints. Would the 90 gr hollow point be a good long range bullet, or would it be too light? There is the 100 and 110 gr. Would they work in the neighborhood or 400 to 600 yards? Back-up to my 22-250. Thanks.

Most definitely would work but its alot of gun for a pd. If you just want to go bust off a few it would work great but all day shoot with a .270 would wear me down.

The .270 will do it right enough but at a price.
Even if you load your own, it's going to cost way more for each shot: 54-60grains of powder against 35-40 for the 22-250, plus the more expensive bullets & brass.

I know Elmer Keith opined the .270 was a "damned adequate coyote rifle", but, that is ridiculous. Enough gun squared, at least!

If is is all you have, go for it, but the recoil is likely to be a tad grim. And as said, expen$ive!

That said, I had a buddy that hunted ground squirels with his Savage 99 in .308, and he had a prefectly good 257 Roberts.

Your 22-250 will NOT bounce off, guaranteed, and a 223 or 243 will do the job, probably better than a larger bore. Just my $.02.

400-600 yds? That's a VERY nice neighborhood, but I doubt I could SEE a prairie dog at 600 yards, let alone hit him. Sounds like a good place to practice stalking skills.

My guess is that self spotting with a 270 is not gonna work. There would be too much recoil and while you're recovering your sight picture it's all over. In my prairie dog and ground squirrel expeditions that is always a important factor in rifle selection.

JMHO

You mention that this would be a backup for your 22/250. I am assuming that you mean to use the .270 while the 22/250 cools? Not a bad idea for giving you valuable experience and keeping your "eye" in with the .270 when deer season comes around but, like everyone else has said, the recoil will soon have you wishing for something lighter and the barrel heating issue will be as bad or worse than your 22/250.

Sorry, I don't load for the .270 but I think its a good idea to work up a varmint load for your big game gun. Gives you more trigger time with it.

Using PointBlank to compare one of my .220 Swift loads with a Hornady 110 grain V-Max load from the manual the trajectories are close, about 1" difference at 600 yards. Also at 600 yards the Swift shows 350 ftlbs while the .270 shows 900.

The folks are right about recoil and heating but that depends on number of shots and rate of fire. I doubt that you'd get enough shots at coyotes to heat the barrel much.

I shot a large number of Woodchucks with a 270 using 90 gn Speer HP and 50.2 gn of 4064. I'll admit most of my shots are sub-200 yards. I've never shot a Coyote with this load but it does a great job on Red Fox.