But when younger, I became so enamored with the writing of Jack O'Connor and the .270 being capable of killing everything in North America that I ended up taking a Brown bear with it while in Alaska. Not my intent, but sometimes the devil drives and the bear was the devil that day. Bear was not on my menu but he had me on his. He dropped within 15 yards of me, a another second later and I'd just be another stupid dead hunter. Under gunned, over my head, 3X9 scope cranked all the way up, hunting moose and not even thinking a bear was around. So after that I took everything I read with a large grain of salt and never forget the bad things that can happen.
Would you pleeze give us the reference for alleged O'Connor endorsement of 270 as a brown bear rifle and-or for any thing in North America? Book or magazine article reference? O'Connor never wrote that 270 was an ideal brown bear rifle. as I remember he said it was on the light side but with right bullets it would work by a cool shot and under ideal conditions. In some of his books he mentioned Alaskan game warden Hosea Sarber who took many browns with a 270 but that was with heavy bullets and under controlled conditions. He also wrote about hunting browns himself with 375HH and with a 300 Weatherby as I remember. I think you owe O'Connor an apology. Your comment sounds like just another one from a peanut gallery guy who knows more than some of the respected hunters and editors of the past.
Jack spent a lot of printing ink saying that YOU should have a .270, and it should be a spiffy, new, Winchester model 70. JACK, to a large degree, hunted with a 30-06. Keep in mind there were a lot of great gunsmiths in that era building beautiful custom rifles with controlled feed Mauser surplus actions, I guess those guys didn't seem all that important to Jack.
If any writer ever mentioned Alaskan Brown Bears, and the Winchester .270, in the same sentence, he should be forced to go do just that. I'm still waiting for a "perfect shot in ideal conditions", have been waiting most of 50 seasons.
Calling a .270 "a bit light" for brown bears is like calling a Bessemer furnace "cozy".
As to Don Zutz, at least he actually took pictures of the patterns he was getting, and figured out why some loads were tighter than others, out of the same barrel. And then told us, truthfully, why that was.
Best,
Ted
