I was thinking about the thompson center encore, or one of the marlins.

If it were me, I would get the Marlin. If you decide to go that route, then you will have the hard decision between the short Guide Gun, or the longer rifle.
I just think the old 45-70 would fit better with a classy gun like the lever action. Unless you get a sharps rolling block of course.

C. Davis

The buffalo classic comes drilled for a scope. I just like the williams sight on it . It 's a peep sight so it reminds me of my Army days with a ar-15. The deer you shoot with it will have no wasted meat you can eat right up to the hole. Its fun to listen to your huntin buddies say I bet that thing will tear a deer in half or is there anything left after you shoot? This cartridge is as good a deer round out to 150 yards as it gets. You can shoot farther but I limit my shots to that. They have cowboy shoots that have 1000 yard shots, that is simply throwing a chunk of lead up and guessing where it will fall. If you get on chuck hawks web site there is some great info on there about this great round.

I just got a 45/70 barrel for my encore. I got the 24" barrel and mounted a 1.5-4x20 leupold. I really like the encore. I also have a 209x50, a 24" 22-250 barrel, and a 24" 30/06 barrel. I haven't gotten a chance to shoot the 30/06 barrel yet bt the other barrels all shoot very well. The nice thing about the encore is that when I'm traveling I can have a short easy to carry case with both a 22-250 for fox-wolves and a 30/06 for moose/carabou/bears. The 45/70 is an excellent barrel to have on when traveling the river fishing incase I run into a moose or bear. There is a serious amount of power in that little package when you shoot a 350gr JFN @ 2100fps. I am sending my 24" barrel to be cut down to 18" for portabilty/quickness. A 18" barrel still achieves pretty good performance in the 45/70 and a 18" barreled encore is a lot shorter and more compact than a 18" barreled marlin. I think you would really like the encore.