What will cause my float bowls to go dry

As others have said, modern gas sucks even when it's non ethanol but it also varies by region.

I have the same issue with a pair of holley 4160 carbs, only the front one though, my rear one seems to behave.

The poor running on restart after a short stop is caused by the gas percolating in the carb after shutdown and making it rich. Try holding the pedal down between half and full throttle when cranking then give it a few revs to blow out the excess fuel.

To help the issue, make sure your timing curve is decent or let us know what it is. Too little timing can cause an engine to run much warmer at idle and other operating points than it should.
I've tried everything (heat shields, spacers, lower thermostat temp) except the small return line filter setup, but I'll probably be trying that soon too since this issue is so aggravating and nothing has fixed it or even changed the behavior.

I had a similar issue with an Edelbrock carb and replaced it with efi and haven't had a hot start issue since... Ymmv.