I supect lots of good advice coming your way. And as you will read, there are a lot of personal choices .... none of which will be off base. I hope this helps.
The 308 Win. cartridge combined with a quality bolt action is going to be difficult to beat as far as a fine set-up for deer hunting. Though I ahve hunted with both auto loaders and lever actions, I have found that I seldom get (or need) a second shot opportunity but if I do I usually can manage one well with a bolt action. I haveused a 308 Win. for hunting for well over 30 years.
As far as which maker? There are several fine offerings out there. My personal favorite is a Styer Pro-Hunter "Mountain". It is has a removeable clip, an easily adustable length of pull, a very good trigger from the factory, and a 20" barrel which I find great for my style of hunting. The accuracy of my particular one is excellent. I also have a couple of Remington 700's, a Browning BBR (out of production now) and a Mauser hunting rifle. All of these are fine shooters as well. I say that to say I am fairly confident that any maker will do.
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I use a 165 gr. bullet in hand loads, either the Sierra Game King or Nosler Partition. I have cleaned killed critters as large as 350-400 pound feral hogs. As far as this cartridge and a 20" barrel for long range shot effectiveness on medium game ... I have one shot, clean killed mature mule deer out as far as about 325 and have made one long shot kill on a coyote ranged at about 400.
Scope ? I harp on this probably too much ... but the best bang for the buck so to speak is the scope. The Ziess Conquest I think is a very good value. I am partial to the top end Swarovski and Ziess scopes, but I realize that these are well outside the budget of most of us. There are a lot of very good scopes in the $350 range as well. Vortex is getting a lot of "love" in the hunting rags, as well as from folks that have used them. Hard to beat the top end Leupold and Bushnell Elite lines as far as performance for the dollar.