In this cartridge, Browning Ammunition offers a 175-grain load in its Long Range Pro family. The .277-caliber bullet is a Sierra Tipped GameKing and it leaves the muzzle at an impressive 2,835 fps. Winchester has a couple of loads. One is an Expedition Big Game Long Range load pushing a 165-grain AccuBond bullet. Another offering features a 170-grain Ballistic Silvertip. I learned there is also a Match entry from Winchester with a 170-grain Sierra MatchKing bullet.

The parent cartridge is the .270 Winchester Short Magnum, so one might say the 6.8 Western falls into the realm of the “short, fat magnums” that became the rage some years ago. It’s not a belted cartridge, though.

I’m particularly pleased Browning and Winchester offer several rifle models in this caliber for 2021. My guess is they’ll sell a bunch of them.

Winchester’s rifling twist is 1:8-inches so in a 24-inch barrel the projectile is going to rotate three times, which will enhance its ballistic capabilities at fairly long ranges. Browning uses a 1:7-½” twist rate in its rifles so the bullet gets a little bit more spin traveling through a 24-inch bore. The tighter rifling twist stabilizes heavier projectiles.

Winchester will offer several variations of its XPR and Model 70 series rifles, all with three-round capacities because of fat profile of the case. I did some counting and came up with nine Model 70 versions. In the XPR series, I counted 14 different variations.