By David E. Petzal

This question came from R. Peterson, and was intended for my new column, but I couldn’t resist, so here goes:

Is there any reason, Mr. Peterson asks, to choose a standard .270 over a .270 WSM? To which I reply, there are a number of them. I’ve used the standard .270 since 1973, and shot and hunted with it about as much as I have with anything. I owned a .270 WSM for 10 years, but I used it a lot.

What you get with the .270 WSM is about 150-200 fps more than you get with the standard cartridge. The velocity increase comes via a powder capacity that is 5 to 6 grains greater. In the older cartridge, you can reach 2,950 fps with a 150-grain bullet, which I consider the most useful weight, while in the .270 WSM you can reach 3,050. I found that the lighter bullet weights give a greater increase in velocities. With 130-grain bullets you can get 3,250 fps, which is really moving.

However, this comes at a price.

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By David E. Petzal

A former editor of Field & Stream once asked me to explain the American system of cartridge designation, and if it was possible for him to familiarize himself with the weird and wonderful assortment of cartridges that we stuff in our firearms.

“You’d do better to try and learn Finnish,” I said. “Unless you start memorizing the lexicon of cartridges before your teens, your brain has already hardened too much to absorb it.” [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

The video below shows a behind the scenes look at a Field & Stream photo shoot. The photographers ran a time-lapse camera through the whole day, and this video compresses a seven-hour session into a minute and a half. We had to go to Des Moines to find a photo studio big enough to drive a car into and F&S hired three photographers from Chicago to do the shoot. I am the model, the floor washer, and assistant decoy arranger in the video. We spent the entire morning, 8 a.m. to noon, moving decoys around. The actual photography didn’t take long at all.

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By David E. Petzal

Back in the 1970s, Uncle Robert Brister told me that one of the most useful things any big-game hunter could own was a binocular in the 15x60 range. He said he never went elk hunting without one, and because I always did everything he said, I rushed right out and bought a Zeiss porro prism glass in 15x60 and it was exactly as he said, a highly specialized but invaluable tool if the circumstances were right.  Of course, like a jerk, I sold them some years later, but recently I traded a lot of stuff and coughed up some cash and got another big glass in the same power range. [ Read Full Post ]