.270 Winchester is dead (6.5 PRC killed it?).
This is a dramatic claim. A beloved American cartridge is dead. Perhaps on life support is more accurate. The .270 Winchester has been with us since 1925. Immortalized by revered Field and Stream corespondent, Jack O’Connor. Idolized by hunters in the Western United States for almost a century. Long before the current long-range hunting craze, the .270 Winchester proved the choice when hunters needed to reach out across mountain gullies or mesas with some bad news for mule deer, Big Horn sheep, and even elk. It did this with a polite nudge to the shooter’s shoulder, rather than a belted magnum’s ball-peen hammer blow.
The .270 Winchester has been considered the other “do it all” North American cartridge. Although, it lived in the .30-06’s shadow, it shot flatter and had less recoil than the war winner “Ought-Six”. It went on to become a common sight in hunting camps from Montana’s Gallatin Range, to Patagonia, and Zimbabwe. Its manners and ability to pole-axe medium-sized game at distance won hunters’ admiration around the globe.
Time marches on, however, and so does technology. It should come as no surprise newer cartridges evolved over the decades which may render the .270 Winchester irrelevant at best, and obsolete at worst.
The chief culprit in the new wave is the 6.5 PRC. PRC stands for Precision Rifle Cartridge. So named by its progenitor, the Hornady ammunition company. The PRC line springs from Hornady’s cartridge ‘o the month club which began with the loved–and reviled–6.5 Creedmoor.
As much as we’d like to dismiss this as mere cartridge click baiting, the inconvenient truth is some cartridges in Hornady’s clown car are too good to ignore. The 6.5 PRC chief among them.
We took a long hard look at the .270 Winchester and the 6.5 PRC to determine if the newbie can overthrow the legend. The results are contained in this terrific video. Watch to find out if the .270 Winchester has been killed off by the upstart 6.5 PRC.
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At time of publication, LocaCarnivore had no commercial interests in any products or brands mentioned in this video.
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