The first time Paula Varney entered Maine’s moose lottery, her son, B.J., was in diapers.

The first time Varney won the moose lottery was last night, and her son is old enough, and lucky enough, to go with her.

“I’m excited. I’ve been waiting 22 years to do this,” said Varney, of Turner.

Varney was one 2,895 out of 73,755 applicants to win a moose permit in the annual moose lottery drawn last night at Northeastland Hotel in Presque Isle. She and 22-year-old B.J. both won bull permits for District 5, north of Baxter State Park, for Sept. 27 through Oct. 2.

“That’s awesome. We have a camp at Moosehead, so we’ll be there together,” said Varney, who was a subpermittee when her husband Brad Sr. bagged a cow a couple of years ago. “There’ll be a crowd there.”

B.J. Varney also won his first permit, though he once helped a friend tag a 900-pound bull with a 16-inch spread as a subpermittee.

“It’s going to be hard to top that, but we’re going to try,” B.J. Varney said. “My cousin laughs at me (for preferring a bull), but I go for the horns, not the meat.”

Varney’s cousin, Jason Dunn of Greene, also won a permit, though in District 6, in the Presque Isle/Caribou area.

The Varney family’s luck Wednesday night would have made Dale Carlton jealous any other year. Carlton has bought six chances in the lottery every year since its inception in 1980 and didn’t win until his number was drawn for an antlerless permit last night.

“I got a whole bunch of bonus chances for never having been picked,” said the 59-year-old Dixfield man.

Residents could buy one chance for $8, three for $13 or six for $23. Non-residents had to pay $13 for one chance or up to $53 for multiples of 10 chances. Applicants who had not won in the previous lottery or lotteries were allotted one bonus point for each consecutive year they applied and were not selected.

Applicants must wait at least two years since winning their last permit before entering the lottery again, which is what Patrick Linck of Minot did before winning his second permit this year.

Linck hopes to have the same success he had when he shot a 400-pound bull west of Baxter State Park in 2001, though he’d like to have a little more time to enjoy it this year.

“I was in the middle of building a house,” said Linck, 41, who won a bull permit for District 3 in northeast Aroostook County this year. “I went up there and got business done by noontime on the first day and went back home and got right back to work. It wasn’t the most pleasurable experience.”

Linck’s chances of getting a second moose, or in Carlton and the Varneys case, their first one, are very good. Last year, 2075 out of 2,593 permitted hunters, 80 percent, killed a moose.

The season is split into two parts – Sept. 27 through Oct. 2 and Oct. 11-16. Winners were assigned one of those two weeks as well as what district they could hunt in, based on the order drawn and their highest-listed preference.