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Ok I'm old school and still hunt the old school with with 30 y/o shells and lay in the decoys with no blind. I let my camo be my blind. But we used to cover the spread, and by that I mean we would spread out within the decoys and cover a lot of ground by placing ourselves all throughout the dekes. Now days everyone is bunched up into a 15 foot area. You can have 6 guys all in a row and if you notice on a lot of the videos guys are shooting over everyone's head and to me that looks unsafe. When did the placement change so radically? Was it the invention of the ground blind? Personally I still like to spread things out so guys can cover the whole spread. Anyone still lay in the dekes anymore?

Can't speak for others, but I want my hunters, and especially big parties, in a row for safety reasons. That way everyone knows exactly where everyone else is, and as long as only the man on the left end points a gun left and only the man on the right end points a gun right, we're cool. If someone swings a gun across his lap to load it, much less shoots over someone else, I'm not a bit shy about reminding him that's a real bad idea.

I found it harder to conceal layouts well than the type of hunters apt to handle being out of a pit well. That and they're a PIA.

Don't know. Hunt alone so much that I'm that guy you probably don't want in your group.

Have hunted in lines of layouts, really big pits, and blinds. Group of eight or ten is common.
Really prefer to go it alone or maybe with one "assistant".

After thinking about it a minute or two I came up with "why it changed".
In a word...CAMERAS.

I too hunt alone most of the time ( I prefer it), but Betty you probably hit the nail on the head. Now days everyone is after their 15 minutes of fame and if everyone is spread out it would be much tougher to film....................