That is only required in a Town were written permission of landowner is required. Some towns have have a "Landowner permission" requirement, but not the written component. Some towns have no requirement.
That said, getting it in writing is a good idea.
Under MGLs unless land is posted "No Trespassing" or " No hunting", it is lawful to hunt the land (remember, "hunting" has a broad definition) unless there are town ordinances to the contrary. Most towns had the sign on the major roads leading into town; now, it's online, mostly.
Check out this neat angle from New York State:
Posting Information for Landowners, Boaters, Fishermen and Hunters:
Q. Is written permission from the person posting necessary?
A. No, but written permission bars prosecution of trespass. Some landowners find written permission a convenient way to get to know guests, and to keep track of them. They write simple notes or make homemade forms. DEC also provides free blank Landowner Permission Record forms for granting permission.
Bolding mine.
(BTW, this re-infuriates me how NYS is careening down the toilet. There's a long tradition of the state encouraging recreational use of rural land, even private property, and a bureaucracy to implement that. And at this point, the D.E.C. gets paid tons of money to still behave that way, even while ghetto politicians pass laws that disarm the country folk and make much of it pointless).
^ The actual posting of the land has to be done a certain way aswell, from what i've been told. A sign here and a sign there to my knowledge is not legal, it has to be a certain height and certain distance between signs posted 360 around the property. I've also been told the signs need to list the landowners name & address and must be signed & dated (with new date applied yearly). ...
Ch. 131 §36: Fishing, hunting, or trapping on private, posted land:
A person shall not fish, hunt or trap on private land without permission of the owner or tenant thereof, after such owner or tenant has conspicuously posted thereon notices which bear the name of such owner or tenant and which state that fishing, hunting or trapping on such land, as the case may be, is prohibited.
This Masstypical vagueness is in marked contrast to NY State; more from the above page:
...Q. Must signs be a specific size?
A. Notices must be a minimum of 11 inches by 11 inches.
Q. Is any particular wording required?
A. Signs must bear the name and address of the owner, lawful occupant or other person or organization authorized to post the area. The sign must bear a conspicuous statement which shall either consist of the word "POSTED" or warn against entry for specified purposes or all purposes without the consent of the person whose name appears on the sign. These words must cover a minimum space of 80 square inches (about 9 by 9 inches) of the sign.
Q. How many signs must be used in posting lands and how close together must they be set?
A. At least one sign must be set on each side of the protected area and on each side of all corners that can be reasonably identified. Signs shall be no more than 660 feet apart, close to or along the boundaries of the protected area. Since the signs must be conspicuous, they should be high enough, and spaced closely enough to be seen. Please don't turn your property into an eyesore by using more signs than are necessary.
Q. How frequently must signs be maintained?
A. Illegible or missing signs must be replaced at least once a year.
...
(I assume that the friendly FAQ is backed up by real words in real laws, but I'm not going to bother, um, hunting them down as a cite).
That is not what I was told the last time I spoke with a real estate attorney in MA.
Yeesh.
(I hadn't previously known that the Mass. posting legal standard was "conspicuously"). One of the (two?) times I've stood on my hind legs in Town Meeting was to ask Town Counsel whether a proposed bylaw restricting size and density of signs would preclude landowners from posting their land with sufficient size and density to meet state posting standards. (In other words, if the state said it has to be a billboard every 50', and the town forbids more than one postage stamp per mile, you're screwed). He told town meeting that in his legal opinion, the bylaw couldn't preclude it, because he'd never heard of a state law regarding the posting of land.
Ironically, I noticed my first Posted sign in Mass. (in town) the very next day. (Attached to a perfunctory roadside fence on a power line RoW).
So while larueminati may indeed (like me) have confused Mass. law with that of a state that is comfortable with the outdoors, the question becomes: is there any Mass. case law on "conspicuously"?