sheep creep

Noun

sheep creep (plural sheep creeps)

1. A small, low opening built into the base of a drystone wall or farm boundary; it allows sheep and lambs to pass freely between fields while blocking larger livestock like cows.
   • Hares are also snared and trapped. I used to know an old man in whose blood the poaching instinct ran so strongly that, though reduced almost to ineptitude by age and infirmity, he would persist in trying to trap hares in “sheep creeps” (holes in stone walls to let sheep through from one field to...1895, Cassell and Company, “THE POACHER AND HIS CRAFT”, in Cassell’s Family Magazine Vol. 21 1895, page 804
   • I knew a cunning old gamekeeper in Yorkshire who used to frustrate the efforts of people who practised this kind of poaching by what he called "mistetching" the Hares on his beat every autumn. He netted as many of them as he could himself, and then turned them loose again. The consequence was that...1898, Richard Keaton, “Frustrating the Poachers”, in With nature and a camera; being the adventures and observations of a field naturalist and an animal photographer, page 175

   Synonyms:

   cattle creep, cripple hole, smoot hole, smoot