As a point of interest, I have chronographed my top load with a 160 grain Nosler bullet from my 25" barreled 270 Winchester built on a Mauser.
Using a max safe load of H4831 I get readings that average 2791 FPS
With my Benelli R1 270 WSM using the same bullet I got an average of 2874 using the top load of H1000 powder. I chronographed several powders and none gave me 2900, but some were just a bit faster than H1000. None of the other powders I tried were anywhere near as accurate in my Benelli.
My point is this:
There is nothing at at all wrong with the 270 short mag. My Benelli is finicky about ammo, but many 270 WSMs are not. It does what it is supposed to do and does it well.
However the original 270 Winchester is not very far behind at all and does all the same things the WSM does, and does them just as well. "Same things" being the killing of game animals.
The extra 83 FPS I get from my short mag is fine, but I cannot be convinced that it matters on any game on earth. I like my Short mag, but I like my standard 270s too. I see no difference on the deer, antelope and elk I have killed with them.
The ballistic table I am reading shows me that the Short Mag starting the same bullet at 83 FPS faster is going the same speed as the standard 270 at 42 yards as the 270 Win is at the muzzle.
So you can say the 270WSM is the exact same "game getting recipe" as the 270 Winchester,------ but with an additional 42 yards of range.
Nothing wrong with that. But I don't see it as an answer to any problem either. The standard 270 has a very long reach already. I can't see that 42 extra yards is going to help it in reality.
In my opinion the short mags serve one purpose more that any other.
that is to sell something new.
As I said before, I see nothing wrong with them, but I don't see them as doing anything in the game fields that we have not had available to us for many many years.
The 300 Short mags give the same performance with 180 grain bullets and lighter that the regular 300 mags do. Ballistics we have has since 1920. (With the 200 and 220 grain bullets you have advantages in the older shells however.)
The 7mm Short mag is going to do everything the the 7MM Rem mag does.
Ballistics we have has since 1961.
In my opinion, short mags would be best offered in Lever actions, pumps and autos because such actions can be made more compact if they use short cartridges. They offer no advantage at all in bolt actions.
Some will say the short action is stiffer and therefore more accurate, but that theory and facts don't line up in my 48 years of gunsmithing.
I have made more rifles in 06 length and standard magnum length cartridges than I can count, and nearly all of them shot groups under MOA. A few have shot groups regularly under 1/2 MOA with probably 30 of them.
What? .........that not good enough? For who and for what game animal?
I have worked on a LOT of the short mags in the last 15 years and I have NOT been disappointed with their accuracy. One that deserves to be a lot more popular is the 325 Win Short Mag. I have had 6 come through my shop in need to breaks to tame the recoil, but holy cow are they accurate! (ammo cost is killing them, and probably not helping sales in any other short mag either)
The 325 WSM is the equal to the 8mm Rem mag and again I see nothing to complain about. But ballisticly, it's not really something new.
So I am not convinced the short mags are all that and a bag of chips.
They are equal in most cases, but not superior any any case I have seen yet.
In the Browning BLR and the Browning short track autos I can see a real nitch market that the short mags fill better than standard magnums. If other gun manufacturers would follow Browning's lead, I might recommend short magnums a lot more, but in bolt actions I have found the standard 06 length, 300 Win. length and 375H&H length actions and shells offer all the short mags do, and sometimes a bit more.
