Migrating southward along the Atlantic coast from Labrador, Newfoundland, and portions of southeastern Quebec and western Greenland, along the shores of Cape Cod bays and ponds arose the famous Massachusetts goose and duck stands. These varied in complexity from the “shooting blind” or “brush house,” which was made of reeds and branches and looked like a low cluster of trees and bushes with a few wooden decoys and perhaps a couple of live ones placed within about 20 yards of the pond, to the more elaborate permanent stands. It was a sport peculiar to Eastern Massachusetts, particularly at the ponds of Norfolk, Plymouth, and Barnstable Counties. Overall, there were some “Great Ponds” (over ten acres), as they were called, in the state, most all lying near the coast, having been at one time or another occupied with shooting stands.

The best opportunities usually came when the birds had been driven off their course by the heavy northeasterly storms of the fall and early winter, which sent them inland over the ponds. Block and slab decoys along with live decoys were the chief accomplices of market gunners, who also served as gamekeepers and guides for wealthy sports from the cities.

Shooting on these ponds consisted of hunting from a wooden blind or “stand,” where the “stand gunner” prayed for a big storm, which would drive the waterfowl from the sea inland. The typical Massachusetts stand consisted of a “hut” (also called a “camp” or “shanty”), large enough to sleep and feed six or eight hunters, usually built on the shore of a beautiful pond or freshwater lake about 15 feet directly back of the stand or “breastwork,” the latter located some 20 feet from the water’s edge. The breastwork, or “stockade,” extended often along the pond shore for some distance on both sides, and it was customary to keep the goose beach more or less separated from the duck beach.

The hut usually contained three rooms. A living room, a sleeping room fitted with spring bunks, “similar to those in the staterooms of a Sound steamer,” and a kitchen with the end partitioned off for an ice chest and provision room. The roof and sides were brushed up.