Amanda Peters refers to the outdoors as her “happy place.”

The Lincoln, Neb., woman is a cardiac intensive care unit nurse at Bryan Medical Center East, and in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, she has leaned on that happy place even more. That escape recently helped her earn her first whitetail deer.

When she landed it at the end of rifle season in November, her father, Marv, submitted the memory to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission’s Take ’em Hunting Challenge, which encourages people to take a beginner hunting.

While Marv has always been an avid hunter, Amanda grew up f...