Handloading the .270 Winchester
Reloading the still-relevant high roller!
I have been dreaming of an antelope hunt for 40 years, but one thing or another stopped me from committing. I don’t know why, as I am surrounded by the speed goats every time I leave the house. After not getting drawn this year, I decided to go outside Arizona and booked a hunt in eastern New Mexico. As you read this, I will either be enjoying the sweet taste of Pronghorn or the bitter taste of unfilled tag soup.
Daydream Believer
As long as I can remember, the .270 Winchester has been the premier Pronghorn cartridge in my dreams. A few years ago, I found a 1968 Winchester Model 70 at a small gun shop. The classic lines tugged at my heartstrings, so it came home with me.
Some may question the wisdom of choosing a hundred-year-old cartridge. If you read the writings of Jack O’Conner, the .270 Winchester was his favorite cartridge. He took everything from woodchucks to grizzly bears by using an appropriate bullet. Col. Townsend Whelen was also a proponent as was the prolific handloader and writer Ken Waters. Their writings took the .270 past what many factory magnum loads will do.
My rifle had average accuracy with factory ammunition, but I wanted sub-MOA. The first step was to replace the walnut with an H&S Precision synthetic stock with an internal aluminum bed. Accuracy improved, but I felt I could get it tighter.
When I started down this road, the ’Rona was still impacting the reloading component market and I felt fortunate to find anything on the shelf at Sportsman’s Warehouse. Lady Luck smiled at me for once because I found a box of Hornady .270 130-grain CX monolithic bullets. Next to it was a box of Hornady .270 145-grain ELD-X bullets. Both came home with me. A box of Berger 140-grain VLD Hunter bullets appeared on the store shelf two weeks later. Of course, it joined the Hornady bullets on my reloading bench.
Brass was another problem. Again, luck was on my side, as an acquaintance offered a bag of new Winchester brass at less than pre-pandemic prices. I prefer to fire-form the brass before getting serious about working up a load. Once the case is fully expanded to fill the chamber, I bump the shoulder back 0.002″ to 0.003″ using a headspace comparator as a guide.
Tension Headaches
In 1983, I received my first reloading manual as a gift from my future wife. It was the Speer Number Ten, a manual I read from cover to cover. The only place I remember mentioning annealing was in the back glossary. Now, annealing is one of the first steps many reloaders take. Why? For accuracy, consistent neck tension is essential. Accuracy demands the bullet-to-neck tension be the same for every shot; otherwise, pressure will vary wildly.
Unless I see the discoloration from annealing on new cases, I anneal my cases before loading. While I hope to afford an AMP annealer soon, I still perform the deal with a deep-well tool socket chucked up in a battery-powered drill method. After 30 years of soldering HVAC lines, I’m pretty good about judging the heating of brass. Is my method perfect? Not by a long shot, but I seem to get good results.
In working up my loads I found prudent use of a Lee factory crimp die tightened the groups enough to make it part of my reloading practice.
Some writers claim magnum primers should be used in the long case. I do not. My preferred primer brand is Federal. However, since the summer of 2020, Federal large rifle primers have been as scarce as rooster’s eggs. Fiocchi has been the only brand of LRP I can find but they work well. I have used the press-mounted primer system, but I prefer the ease and precision of the Frankford Arsenal Perfect Seat Hand Primer system. It allows the primer depth to be custom set using an adjustable turn wheel.
I used to bleed RCBS Green when it came to reloading equipment including dies, but my allegiance changed after I picked up a Hornady rifle die set. At first, the floating bullet alignment sleeve threw me for a loop, but I was hooked once I realized it held the bullet in perfect alignment. Since I use long secant ogive bullets, I changed to the appropriate Hornady ELD Match seating stem.
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Hot & Cold
The temperatures during antelope season can run into the 30s at night to 100 degrees during the day. Some powders are temperature-sensitive that can mean significant shifts in pressure and velocity and a change in impact downrange. For pressure and velocity stability in all conditions, I chose Hodgdon’s H4831 SC, one of their Extreme Powder family. H4831 SC is a stick powder and my favorite for almost all of my hunting rifle loads and I thought it would be perfect for the .270 Winchester.
I started low and worked the loads up using accuracy and velocity as my guide. At 58.5 grains I reached the velocity I was looking for. Of the three bullets, the Hornady 145 ELD-X provided the best SD at 5.38 with an average velocity of 2,988 fps. Groups were less than one MOA sample after sample.
The same powder weight and base-to-ogive measurement were used for the Berger VLD Hunter loads, which had an average velocity of 2,978 and an SD of 13.4. The group sizes opened up to about 1.5 MOA. I bumped the Hornady CX a little higher in powder weight and received an average velocity of 3,031 fps, with an SD of 23.75. The group size averaged around 1.5 MOA. I could experiment more with the Berger bullets, but I am happy enough with the Hornady ELD-X load to buy a custom turret from Kenton Industries.
As always, your rifle may react differently so approach all loads with caution. But if you see a .270 Winchester languishing in a pawn shop, be assured it will outperform many of the new wonder cartridges out there if you’re willing to put in the work.