Man I have some great stories and memories of how to setup a field from some real pros. It was a rare combination and some smart creative folks that knew game and doves and what to do to attract and hold em. We were friends with a family that owned an explosive company. They had a good bit of land that was secured and had a network of roads between trailers and metal cargo containers for storing explosives. You could only store so much of it in one place so they had plots for storage setup all over the place with fields and gravel roads connecting it all.
They used to have customer appreciation slash family/friend hunts every year. For us lucky few we used to quail hunt there as well. They figured the perfect formula was bare ground patches in the middle millet and sunflower fields. It worked incredillbly well for them plus they did lots of other tricks that were all legal but effective if you were committed to wanting to attract dove for a great hunt.
There setups and blinds are almost proprietry and have never seen anyone do it the way they did. Some it appears to be alot trouble but it isn't if you enjoyed it and had a purpose and it paid off. Biggest trick and formula they used was sunflowers and millet fields mixed together and including bare spots. They were meticulous about keeping bare spots, especially in the southeast where we lived. Water, tree lines and power lines not that big a deal in our area but bare spots for them to feed, dust and gravel was paramount, especially in the middle of the dove field, which is harder to do than you would think.
They also figured what was the recipe for an ideal dove field and they had a perfect one setup with the bare spots and how they even precisely would situate the milet round bail blinds just before season opened, which I have never seen done since but they were perfect at providing shade, concealment and catching what little breeze a dove field can offer and capitalizing on it.
BTW back before there were dove decoys and robo decoys they made dove decoy/attractors to place and move around in the dove fields at those bare spots. They had location, habitat, food source, smarts, timing and patience. It paid off every time. Unforetunately it is very hard to recreate the location and habitat that is half of it, but I think if you properly and legally manage food source, smart about what a dove needs/likes and are cognizant of timing it can work in most dove fields.
They also had tricks to manage where hunters setup that I think worked and at least it kept people from sky busing knowing there was plan in place. Let the low ones and high ones pass safely and unmolested and they will doves will stay reasonable until later in the season. The smart ones will then learn to approach at Mach 1 and then learn some aerobatics that would put a Top Gun fighter pilot to shame.
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