Whether they're quacking away on a call in a duck blind, surrounded by a spread of dekes in Mobile Bay's backwaters or watching the sunrise from a boat moored somewhere on the Tennessee River, hunters should be able to sling plenty of steel at incoming waterfowl this winter: Preliminary reports from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service earlier in the year indicated that record numbers of almost every web-footed species were waiting for the first deep freeze that would signal the start of their pilgrimage to south of the Mason-Dixon line.

All that stands in the way of what could be a banner year for the Heart of Dixie's estimated 17,000 waterfowlers is fickle Mother Nature. We need for our cousins up north to endure a hard winter -- one that'll drive the ducks southward from the Prairie Pothole and other far reaches. Of course, it sure wouldn't hurt if we had sufficient rain between now and then to keep our swamps, marshes and beaver ponds filled and looking inviting to the birds.

The Prairie Pothole region -- consisting of parts of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, as well as the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba -- is the primary breeding ground for almost two-thirds of the ducks seen along the Mississippi Flyway. The rest come from the states and provinces on each side of the Great Lakes. A lot of the early data annually amassed on duck populations comes from the Canadian provinces and the Dakotas in that region, along with statistics from Montana to the west.

While higher USFWS breeding-ground counts might put smiles on the faces of biologists, scientists and waterfowl activists closely follow the size of the flocks, as having plenty of ducks up north doesn't mean that we'll see them down here. In fact, some of the worst hunting seasons on record have followed the best springtime counts. So it all comes down to the weather.

Last January, University of Montana professor and wildlife biologist David Naugle delivered a somber message on global warming to waterfowl researchers assembled in Arkansas. Drumming up support for policies calling for a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, he told duck hunters that if they didn't get behind the effort, the Prairie Pothole region and other such breeding grounds would disappear like puddles in the desert.

The Associated Press reported that Naugle was paid by the environmental group Natural State Coalition to lecture on findings he'd published the previous fall in the scientific journal BioScience. To sum up his report: The climate has grown considerably warmer in the last century, and if the trend continues, North America's duck breeding grounds will shrink, with the loss aggravated if warmer weather is coupled with drought.

Naugle's bleak prediction came on the heels of the 2005 season that saw a 50 percent drop in Arkansas's duck numbers, although in some circles that has been attributed to changes in migration patterns and changes in rice farming there.

"If we can't produce the ducks on the breeding grounds, it's a moot point where they go after this," Naugle warned.