Ok guys just asking me and a few friends have a place leased to duck hunt. Great area to plant corn and millet and flood it. We want to know if we could plant some sunflowers Andy hunt doves before duck season. We are scared of getting fined for baiting
So any thoughts or ideas

You see a lot of dove hunters shooting over sunflowers that I'll bet were planted for hunting purposes and they're not getting fined. I always thought a baited field was grain, millet, seeds, etc. spread over the field but not growing there. I'd ask your state's Fish & Game dept. to be sure. What's considered a baited field probably varies some from state to state.

You have to be very careful!
You can hunt over the sunflowers, but they can't be manipulated, or your duck hunting is over. Which is more important to you? Ask your local conservation officer on his/her interpretation of the rules.

sunflower would have to be either left alone, or harvested, for waterfowl to be hunted there. key is a normal planting or harvesting manipulation.

for doves, it could be mowed, disked, burned.... does not have to be a plant/harvest operation.

but as duckcall says... ask first

Missouri DNR plants sunflowers for dove hunting on conservation lands. Usually between strips of wheat. Then a combination of mowing, discing, and burning takes place. Its like WWIII on opening morning usually, guys every 15 yards.

Bring in a couple loads of chewed up asphalt and dump them in a pile near your water source this Spring so the doves get used to frequenting it before the season. They LOVE that stuff and come Fall you can sit right on top of the pile and shoot 'em as they pass by to see what you're doing!

A friend of mine plants brown top millet around his pond to attract dove and deer.

I think some of the above posts are correct. Slightly different rules on baiting for doves and ducks. What is legal for one, may not be for the other. I have little luck trying to attract doves as there are just too many acres of corn not far from me, that is cut just before dove season. They can just drop out of the sky about anywhere and start feeding. Same with water, it is everywhere. miles

I suggested sunflowers to my friend but he'd already committed to millet.

For some reason there were no doves around here the past two years. Bought two boxes of shells and haven't fired a shot.

I have tried sunflowers and had luck with them until the wholesale move to corn in the area. Farmers now want speed and don't seem to care how much goes out the back. After a rain and you can see it sprouting, I figure at least 10 bushels per acre out the back, maybe more. But they do get over a lot of ground, fast. miles

Where they planting rice before? Or were they soy bean farmers?

Lot of rice with soybeans as a rotation crop along with wheat. Dove don't flock to rice fields although they will eat it if nothing else is around. miles

What about adding a couple loads of road gravel? You could use on the way in/out if you don't like the results...but I'd be surprised if it didn't attract doves for you!

I have seen them really pour into freshly disked fields, in late season especially. open their crops, and they are half full of dirt and half weed seeds

supposedly gravel at home to be considered bait as they flock to it for the grit.... IE I can't put it by my pond as I'd wanted to...