The deer that can take a 270 in the vitals and live is yet to walk the earth The 270 is a DANDY whitetail cartridge, wrather long or short action. I shoot a model 70 featherweight in 270wsm and love the rifle/cartridge. Ok wsm stands for winchester short mag, im sure you know that. With the shorter case it allowed the usual long action rounds to work in short action rifles. Now wssm stands for winchester super short mag. Sense those calibers already worked in short action rifles but the cartridges are even shorter now, they callt hem that. Personaly I WOULDNT touch a WSSM!!! To learn a boatload more about the wsm and wssms please visit www.shortmags.org