Suggestions for new hunter?

So, here's a bit of a background. Despite living in Texas my entire life, I've never been hunting (I know, I know). I was never too interested in the lifestyle until recently. I've always loved animals and never wanted to shoot one dead, but for about the past year and a half I've noticed myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable with eating meat from factory farms (which is most meat). Most of those animals, despite being delicious, probably died some awful deaths and had a ****ty quality of life, which I think is wrong. Animals feel pain and fear, and thinking about that almost makes my meals taste worse.

I could just buy my meat from a small, local farm, but I think learning to hunt would be not only a great learning experience and a useful skill, but would also be morally superior to any other option. In fact, after I'm familiar with hunting, field dressing, and storage/preparation of meat, I plan on eating only the meat I harvest myself, which will undoubtedly save me money while also giving me good experience with different types of game (it'll also mean I have to start fishing, which I'm fine with). As of right now, I only plan on hunting hogs and whitetail, at least until I get the experience to branch out to other things. (Like gators! Gator tenderloin looks like something I'd enjoy.)

But this brings me to my next dilemma: the firearms I should use. Currently, my only firearm is a Glock 42 chambered in .380 ACP, so obviously I'm gonna need to buy some new equipment. As of right now, I'm looking at buying a Henry All Weather lever action rifle chambered in .45-70 Gov't for most game. As for fowl, I know I should be using a shotgun, but I have no shotgun experience whatsoever so some suggestions would be much appreciated.
My reasoning for choosing .45-70 is because I want whatever I shoot to die as quickly as possible. I like the 3000+/- foot pounds of muzzle energy for some of the .45-70 loads, which I'm sure is enough to induce hydrostatic shock, massive hemorrhaging, and tremendous cavitation in any animal. I imagine having a hot piece of metal ripping through your flesh and smashing through your bones is a damn uncomfortable experience, so I want whatever I shoot to expire quickly. I understand my range will be about 200 yards on a good day using a .45-70 levergun, but I don't plan on shooting anything further than 150. I read that the heart and lungs area of a whitetail is about 10 inches, so I figure the closer the better. I'm not too worried about missing, and I'm confident I could make accurate shots from a further distance with a different caliber. I consider myself a fairly decent shot (after I have the time to familiarize myself with the firearm), but I'd rather not risk it. So .45-70 sounds good to me.

But this brings me to another problem. Is .45-70 too much? I've heard that using too large of a caliber can waste meat. Would a smaller caliber be more suited to hogs and whitetail? But then again, I need a cartridge large enough to put the animal down where it stands. I need to make it clear that I don't want to use .45-70 Gov't so I can feel like a big boy. I just don't want the animal to suffer, nor do I want to have to track its blood and search for the carcass after the creature runs off and dies in terror and agony. But is this a realistic goal? Would the .45-70 destroy too much meat? Is there a smaller round that would provide similar results? Range doesn't matter to me. If I can't get close to what I'm going to kill, I'm not gonna shoot at it anyway. Velocity isn't my main concern either.

Please don't suggest .223 Remington or 5.56 NATO, though. I've never been too fond of those cartridges. Coincidentally, those are the 2 cartridges I have the most experience with. I've been told that .223 can take on any game in Texas and that shot placement is what counts, but I have a hard time believing a quick 50-80 grain bullet is gonna have the same lethal potential as a slow 300-475 grain bullet, especially taking botched shots into account. Then again, I've never even shot an animal so I don't have any firsthand experience on how that weight or velocity transfers to the target.
Also, is it a good idea to try to field dress a carcass on my own the first couple times? I've been reading and watching videos on it, but I don't wanna wing it and ruin the meat.
Finally, are there any hunting classes or instructors y'all had good experiences with?
Thanks for you time and your comments.

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Suggestions for new hunter?