My experience with the Browning A-Bolt was a Stainless Stalker in .300 Winchester magnum that I owned a few years back.
Shooting Federal premium 180 grain loads, it would put the first three shots out of a cold, clean barrel into 1/2" at 100 yards, every time.
I did an experiment with that gun... It was accurate - and then I sent it off to have a Pachmyer decelerator recoil pad installed on the stock, while the barreled action went to Magna-Port.
When the gun came back, it behaved just as it had before except then it only kicked like a 30-06. It was also louder, you could literally feel it in your bones when it was fired because of the Magna-Port muzzle-brake. The accuracy was the same as before.
I don't know what kind of accuracy you fellows are getting out of your Remchesters, but in my experience the Browning was a tack-driver right out of the box, with factory loads.
This is what I hear most often from owners of Browning bolt actions and autos, but with the lever guns I hear that they are great - for a lever gun - but do not shoot as well as the bolt or auto except in rare cases.
As for the "extruded action" comment, you'll have to try that on someone who is not knowledgeable about firearm manufacturing processes. - It's amazing what folks will hear, and then repeat without any kind of fact-check.
I have noted that shooters who let the gun cool between shots at the range very seldom need to re-barrel their guns. Same goes for hunting rifles that are not used as range guns, but are only fired a few times a year.
Here's a picture I took with my bore-scope of where the rifling starts in a 7mm RM barrel. The gun looked new on the outside - but somebody had been misusing it at the range, firing rapid strings of shots and not letting it cool down.
( Click image to see it full-size )
Note how sharp the rifling is. - It is unlikely that the gun had over a hundred rounds through it, but it had been Bubba'd up by some shooter who didn't know any better than to fire a rapid string of shots, not letting the barrel have a chance to cool and recover. The steel literally crystallized in the heat that built up.
A little common sense would have kept that barrel from being ruined so quickly. Still, this raises a point in the 270's favor as it is not so hard on barrels as the 7mm RM.
Many shooters are not familiar with barrel tuners like the Browning BOSS system. For the most part, the only users of barrel tuners before Browning developed the BOSS were rimfire benchrest shooters, who cannot hand-load for accuracy.
What it does is tune the barrel vibrations, the same way you do by working up a handload. - But it does it much faster, with a lot less shots fired, and a heck of a lot cheaper.
Instead of tuning the barrel by tinkering with the ammunition by trial and error, you tune the barrel to whatever load you have by accurately moving a small weight at the end of the barrel. Once you have the setting for a particular load, you can tune the gun for other loads and always come back to that setting for that load again, without any trial or error.
This means that you can have the gun tuned for your favorite handload - but if you get stuck having to shoot factory ammo for some reason, you can get that stuff to shoot just as good through a process that will take less than half a box of ammo.
You can get a Browning without a BOSS, or any rifle without a BOSS to shoot poorly with the right ( wrong? ) load, but if you have a rifle equipped with a tuner like the BOSS and can follow simple instructions, you can get it to shoot tight with just about any reasonable load, factory or home-brew.
So I find the comments about poor accuracy in Brownings to be quite dubious, as they are not supported by my personal experience, or by common sense in the case of a BOSS-equipped rifle like I intend to purchase.
I appreciate the comments about the 270 Vs the 7mm Rem magnum, which are what I actually asked about.
Right now I'm leaning toward the 270, as I have discovered that elk hunts here are pay as you go, starting at 3k. The mule deer are a lot cheaper to hunt, especially if one can forgo the trophy hunts and participate in a culling action on one of the big ranches.
In any case, I only have one freezer and don't have room for another one.
I can't keep a garden here because the mule deer come down out of the mountains at night and will eat just about anything edible. If I have to get up in the middle of the night to pee, more often than not, this time of year I will hear a "clop clop" noise from outside which will be a herd of muleys walking down the street, or in my yard.
The drouth broke this year, we had lots of rain so I expect there will be culling operations on the big ranches next year. - I think I'll just stick with the mule deer and most likely will go with a 270 as apparently all agree that it's up to the job for mule deer up to 400 yds, which is as far as I would ever shoot in any case.
If I get a big enough wad of cash to afford an elk hunt, well then I'm guessing that I'll have enough money to buy a new 7mm RM too.
Thanks again, and I'd like to hear more about hunting mule deer with a 270 Winchester!
I think I'll check and see if the public library has any Jack O'Connor books, too.
