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ST. CATHARINES, Ont. — Your aural senses are treated to a wide range of sounds throughout the crowd at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

There’s the traditional cowbells, clappers, bike horns, a train whistle — and yes, even a gong — plus those flatland fans trying to outdo each other with who can hold the last note the longest when shouting “Saskatchewan.”

But there’s one sound that cuts through all of them like a sharp record scratch: the homemade moose call.

What sounds like someone having a really bad night after being over-served is the unmistakable call of the moose associated with Northern Ontario at major curling tournaments.

“We love it,” Team Northern Ontario third Kendra Lilly said with a smile. “Our fans were actually really loud and cheering tonight so it was great to just have everyone here. It’s nice to be in our home province.”

The moose calls rang extra long through the Meridian Centre on Wednesday as Northern Ontario went into OT twice. Krista McCarville’s crew split their games with a 7-6 loss to Ontario’s Rachel Homan during the afternoon draw followed by a bounce-back 7-6 stolen victory over Robyn MacPhee and P.E.I. in the evening.

McCarville had just 19 seconds left on the clock when she made her last shot and forced MacPhee to attempt a soft tap on one of her own stones to raise it onto the button. MacPhee gave it just a bit too much force as her raised stone slid past the target and McCarville stole the winning point.

“That was a little stressful,” Lilly said following the exhausting 22-end day. “We had already used our timeout, so Krista was sort of slowly sliding down and I was kind of inching her on forward trying to get her down the ice fast. She’s good. She has a pretty quick pre-shot routine so I wasn’t worried.”

Northern Ontario improved to a 5-3 record and is currently in fifth place in the round-robin standings. McCarville can’t afford any slip-ups and has to stay in must-win mode for the remaining three preliminary games — including a rematch of last year’s final against defending champs Chelsea Carey and Team Canada — in order to secure a spot in the four-team Page playoffs.

“Tomorrow we have two games so from here on out I think we pretty much have to win out to guarantee us a spot if we want to avoid the tiebreakers,” Lilly said. “We play Team Canada tomorrow, so at this point we want to take it one game at a time and just bring our A-game.

“The field is so strong that you do have to play your best all of the time and even when you do play your best you still might not win. It’s such a long week too that consistency is what’s key to it.”

While Homan and Team Ontario are technically the official home-province favourites, Northern Ontario can also share a spot in that category even if their fans have had to travel quite the distance from their home base in Thunder Bay.

“They’re pretty far away,” said the Sudbury native Lilly. “I’m only about four or five hours away but that’s not too bad. They’re probably 15 hours away or something crazy like that.”

The Manitoba contingent was also out in full force Wednesday. Most of the noises listed back at the start were courtesy of the family and friends of Michelle Englot’s team from Winnipeg and they added big head cut-outs of the players to really stand out.

“A lot of the family showed up within the last couple days,” explained Team Englot alternate Krysten Karwacki. “The heads just showed up today so it’s been kind of funny and really fun at the same time. When I was playing out there I heard my name, so it’s always fun. It’s awesome.”

Karwacki came off of the bench in both games Wednesday with Manitoba rolling out to a 10-2 win over P.E.I. and an 8-3 victory over Nova Scotia. While Manitoba breezed through those games, it hasn’t been quite an easy road despite their 8-1 record and second-place spot in the standings.

“These girls have had to work for it,” Karwacki said. “In quite a few of the games, at the fifth end, we’ve been down four points and the girls have had to come back, so they’ve had to fight hard for these wins. I think that they’ve earned it so far.”

Ontario was the first past the post and into the playoffs.

Homan maintained her undefeated pace running her record up to 9-0 to advance, although she needed that aforementioned extra end to get past McCarville during the afternoon draw.

It looked like Homan was still playing in the Hot Shots contest pulling off an incredible across-the-rings double with ease to score three in the fourth end and grab a 4-1 lead. After forcing McCarville to a single in five, Homan looked to make another tricky shot through the port in six, but luck wasn’t on her side that time as the shooter wrecked on one of the goalposts and spiralled away to give up a steal of two and make it all square at 4-4.

“Crushing,” Homan said. “We knew exactly what we wanted and just caught the line and couldn’t quite hold it. We thought it was perfect and just curled up a little too much because it was on the centre line. Definitely hard to swallow but just bounce back. It was a tied game and that’s all you could ask for with hammer moving forward. We just had to keep battling. They’re an amazing team and we had to fight for every shot, that’s for sure.”

Homan fired a rocket in seven at a cluster of rocks to bounce out McCarville’s counter and claim a deuce to jump back ahead. McCarville settled for another single in eight to close within one and Homan blanked nine to retain the hammer coming home. Facing three counters, Homan had an open draw to the four-foot circle but came up just an inch short. The official measured it twice before awarding the point to Northern Ontario to force the decisive extra.

“I thought we were going hard for the extra early and I was actually surprised we got it that close,” Team Homan second Joanne Courtney said. “I mean, it was pretty frosty out there but they were still carrying so it was kind of a guess. She threw what we thought we needed and it just didn’t quite get there.”

Homan didn’t make the same mistake twice and her do-over on the draw for the win in the extra end was a success.

“This is what we train for. This is what being front-end is all about, so to be able to sweep a draw for the win in an extra end, that’s what gets your heart rate going,” Courtney said. “We played four draws back-to-back-to-back but I had lots left in the tank there and really happy for our skipper, she threw it perfect.”

Homan was looking forward to having the evening off after playing in the past four draws.

“Excited for the break and maybe say hi to friends and family,” Homan said. “I haven’t seen them in a while. I’ll probably say hi to them and enjoy the experience. It’s all about this experience. You never know when you’re going to get back so just loving every second we’re here.”

Homan also reflected on her 2014 run through the Scotties Tournament of Hearts where her team went on a perfect run to successfully defend the title.

“It’s more like scary because you’re bound to lose a game,” Homan said. “It’s sport. It’s really tough to go undefeated. You keep playing as well as you can. No matter what our record is at the end, we just need to win out in playoffs and that’s our goal.”

A malfunction to the dehumidifier meant players had to deal with frosty ice conditions. That made things problematic especially on those delicate shots that suddenly became extra tricky to pull off.

The problem has been fixed, however, and will take overnight to correct.