RE: Howa/Weatherby Vanguard Stainless or Tikka T3 Lite Stainless?
 

You will have a hard time finding a 270 WIN rifle with a barrel longer than 24", that round simply does not need the extra barrel length, the powder is completely burned by the end of 24" and the bullet is properly stabilized, a longer barrel is excess weight, a little more difficult to carry hunting, and serves no purpose in this caliber. Same goes for the WSM calibers for the most part, they use newly designed super fast and efficient buring powder that does not require an excessively long barrel. The older belted mags have slower buring powder and really require the 26" barrel to take advantage of the larger powder charge.

Personally I would consider the Savage over the Howa or Howa made Weatherby Vangard. I agree that they their actions are heavily built but have experienced and read about many problems with them. The Vangard I bought in 300 WBY Mag would fire just under 1 MOA @ 100 yards (barely) as the test target showed but the barrel was seated in the action inproperly. I had over a 1/4" shim under the reader base on the rifle and still ran out of downward elivation before zeroed. Tried several scopes with no change, sent the rifle back to Weatherby (not sure where they sent it). They claimed that they could fix the problem but I insisted on a refund and they did give it to me. Guess that says something for Weatherby's customer service but I would not purchase the Vangard or the Howa myself after that. Again for every good story I have read about Howa and the Vangard, I have read at least one bad story. I feel that Howa is not consistant and did read that they were having quality control issues at the plant at least in the early parts of 2000.