Depending on where you hunted, 2007-08 was either your best waterfowl season in years or your worst.

More than likely, you experienced both extremes, possibly at places within a few miles of each other. That situation wasn't confined to any particular part of the state, either: It happened everywhere.

Like our weather, duck and goose hunting in the Sooner State is a study in extremes. If a place had ample food and water, the hunting was probably great last year. If a place lacked either or both of those requirements, the hunting was poor -- and it's likely that's how it will be again this year, too.

As a whole, waterfowl hunting in Oklahoma has been very good in recent years. According to the 2006-07 Migratory Bird Harvest Report issued last summer by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oklahoma consistently ranks third among states in the Central Flyway for waterfowl harvest. We kill a lot fewer ducks and geese than they do in Texas, for example, but that state is much larger than ours. However, we compare favorably with North Dakota, which ranked second. Every other state in the Flyway was way behind us.

In 2005, we killed 285,100 ducks and geese in the Sooner State, and we killed 302,400 ducks and geese in 2006. In North Dakota, by comparison, hunters killed 519,400 and 378,700 ducks, respectively, in the same years. In 2005, Oklahoma hunters killed 125,375 mallards, and 126,446 mallards in 2006. Our annual bags for those years also included 57,475 gadwalls in 2005, and 68,983 in 2006. Green-winged teal was our bronze medal winner, with 29,807 killed in 2005 and 35,520 killed in 2006.

Our total goose harvest in 2005 and 2006 was 42,500 and 55,100, respectively. Of those, we killed 29,545 Canada geese in 2005 and 42,436 Canadas in 2006. Snow geese numbered 6,591 in 2005 and 6,665 in 2006.

The USFWS had not released harvest totals for 2007, but they were probably similar, if not higher, than those in 2006.

Unfortunately, the quality of waterfowl hunting in Oklahoma depends on many important variables that are far beyond our control or influence. Since the overwhelming majority of the ducks and geese killed in Oklahoma are born and raised in the Prairie Pothole Region of Canada, the Dakotas and Nebraska, the number of ducks and geese we'll see this season depends entirely on habitat conditions in those states and provinces.

If nesting and brood-rearing habitat was poor, the 2008 spring hatch was probably poor, too, as was recruitment of young birds into the migrating population. That more than anything will influence the number of birds that come to Oklahoma this fall and winter, but the effect will be even more noticeable, either positively or negatively, in the 2008-09 season.

We can get an accurate picture of those conditions from the annual May pond counts and breeding mallard pair counts conducted by the USFWS. The USFWS uses these indicators to establish its annual hunting season framework. Complete numbers were not available when this article was being prepared, but Mike O'Meilia, waterfowl biologist for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, said initial impressions were not encouraging.

"It's drier than last year, but that could change tomorrow if they get a big snowfall up north," O'Meilia said. "Last year was pretty good, and all indications were that we had a good year for recruitment, which is always critical to hunting success. If all things were to remain the same, we're looking to be down from last year."