A retired gunsmith and Ruger Forum moderator concerning the .30 Carbine Blackhawk v. .327 Fed Mag Blackhawk:
From TAFFIN TESTS: THE .30 CARBINE:
"The .327 slightly ahead of .30 carbine" REALLY?
My question is that you keep quoting this retired smith. He states that the .30 wins in raw horsepower. I don't dispute this, as I have no first hand experience with .30c.
However he admits that he's not sure when it comes to accuracy between the two. Yes, his .30 was a tackdriver, but could the .327 also be on par with the .30c in this department?
From all that I have heard, the .327 is a hard hitting, flat shooting, and accurate round at reasonable distances. I don't dispute that the .30 may be slightly more powerful, but I would think accuracy may come out to be a wash.
My thought is that for what the .30 and .327 bring to the table, whatever you hit with either one isn't going to know the difference. It seems to me that if you have a gun chambered in .30 carbine, the .30 makes sense. if you have a .327, the .327 makes equal sense.
I don't have a BH in either, but, once again, beyond ballistics, for me, the versatility of the .327 outweighs the kinetic performance of the .30. Both are oddball cartridges compared to the vast majority of what most folks shoot.
Both seem to put an accurate thump on target when rolled to their potential. I just bought a .327 as a savvy just-in-case gun. It fires pretty much anything with a .32 on the box. Not the most common, but available when others seem to be snapped up in a panic.