When I was shooting .45-70s, I never even shot them as far as a hundred yards, mainly because of the lack of any place to do that. While I still lived in West Virginia and doing any shooting with a rifle, other than a .22, people would show up after a few shots and want to know what was going on. You may recall that was when beef prices were going way up. That didn't happen when I was at my father's place because people were used to shooting, only I still didn't have a long range place to shoot.
At the turn of the century, there were several long black powder cartridges intended for use in the single shot rifles popular then for target shooting but I don't know how popular the .45-70 Government was compared to others. As for buffalo hunting, it was a long established activity by the time the .45-70 became available and commercial buffalo hunting didn't last beyond around 1880.