Creek vs. Crick Explained

Some of the folks posting on Beaverpeeler's thread disparaging the word crick got me thinking about the late, great Patrick F. McManus and his excellent explanation of the differences between creeks and cricks.

"There is much confusion in the world today concerning creeks and cricks. Many otherwise well-informed people live out their lives under the impression that a crick is a creek mispronounced. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all, a creek has none of the raucous, vulgar, freewheeling character of a crick. If they were people, creeks would wear tuxedos and amuse themselves at the ballet, opera, and witty conversation; cricks would go around in their undershirts and amuse themselves with Saturday-night fights, taverns and humorous belching.

Creeks would perspire and cricks sweat. Creeks would smoke pipes; cricks, chew and spit. Creeks tend to be pristine. They meander regally through high mountain meadows, cascade down dainty waterfalls, pause in placid pools, ripple over beds of gleaming gravel and polished rock. They sparkle in the sunlight. Deer and poets sip from creeks, and images of eagles wheel upon the surface of their mirrored depths.

Cricks, on the other hand, shuffle through cow pastures, slog through beaver dams, gurgle through culverts, ooze through barnyards, sprawl under sagging bridges, and when not otherwise occupied, thrash fitfully on their beds of quicksand and clay.

Cows should be perhaps be credited with giving cricks their most pronounced characteristic. In deference to the young and the few ladies left in the world whose sensitivities might be offended, I forgo a detailed description of this characteristic. Let me say only that to a cow the whole universe is a bathroom, and it makes no exception of cricks. A single cow equipped only with determination and fairly good aim can in a matter of hours transform a perfectly good creek into a crick."

I wonder why it's not called Field & Crick. ?

Always been a Stream up here

Where men dressed head to toe in Orvis gear ...

Wearing a Fedora hat & Smoking a Handmade Briar Pipe .while fly fishing

I've read his books so many times, I almost have them memorized. Great stories.

Crick sounds like what I know as a branch.

A creek can float a boat, not a big one. A river you can conduct commerce on.

I think we hit the dead of winter today.

I thought that was common knowledge? Always drink upstream from the herd and don't squat with your spurs on?

The creek / crick debate reminds me of the late / great Derry Brownfield's explanation of the difference between lunch and dinner and dinner and supper. Eat at home and it's dinner and supper. Eat in town and it's lunch and dinner.

Creeks are a native american tribe that orginally lived in what today is western Ky and Tn. Cricks are a painful muscle condition that affects the neck.

Good ol' Pat McManus. Don't recall where he ever weighed in on the "skinned vs skun" debate. (But I gotta say, spell check changes my skun to skin every time). LOL

Running water here that is not referred to as a river is a creek even though the above description of a crick is more fitting for the most part.

Still a creek to me and the majority of native (lived most of their life here) folks in my neck of the woods.

A creek starts from a spring.
A crick starts from a cow. That's no bull.

Then what's a brook?
When I hear of someone back your way use the term "brook", I picture a crick no wider than about 24 inches.

Here’s the Zern Method to Kill Crows….

How to hunt crows

by Ed Zern

Over the years a number of readers have written, asking me to provide them with my crow-shooting system as it appeared here a decade or so ago. As both of them are regular subscribers I can hardly afford to ignore their request, and hasten to comply.

The system is based on a study of crow behavior conducted by research biologists at Phelps University which showed that crows have a relatively high level of intelligence and are actually able to count, but only in multiples of three or less, so that the conventional procedure for fooling crows-by sending several men into a blind, then having all but one of them leave -- is not likely to work except with very young birds, if at all. Thus, even if six crow hunters go into a cornstalk blind and only five come out, the crows probably won't be fooled, as they will have counted off the hunters in trios and will realize that one of the groups is short a man; as a result they will stay the (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) away from there until the frustrated gunner gives up and emerges.

My system for successful crow hunting is childishly simple, and consists of the following steps:

1. Build a blind overlooking a cornfield frequented by crows.

2. Assemble a group of twenty five hunters, all dressed more or less alike and of nearly equal height, build, and facial characteristics. All the hunters should be clean-shaven, but twelve of them should be wearing false mustaches. The group should assemble in a barn or some sort of building not less than 350 yards from the field. (It would be prudent to have a few spare hunters on hand, to substitute in cases of pulled muscles, heart attacks or other contingencies.)

3. All of the hunters should be equipped with 12-gauge shotguns, but it is advisable that these be fairly light in weight, as it is important that all hunters going to and from the blind must travel at a dead run, so that the crows will not have sufficient time for their calculations.

4. As soon as a flock of crows comes into the area, eleven of the hunters are dispatched from the old barn to the blind, running at top speed. The instant they arrive, seven of them turn around and rush back to the barn.

5. When the seven hunters get back to the barn, they are joined by six other hunters and the thirteen of them sprint back to the blind as fast as possible; on arrival there, ten of them immediately turn around and dash back to the barn.

6. Before the ten arrive, eight more hunters are sent from the barn to the blind. When they meet the ten returning from the blind all of them switch hats and false mustaches while milling around in a tight huddle, then break it up and resume running to their respective destinations.

7. As soon as the eight hunters arrive at the blind, five of them turn around and rush back toward the barn; on the way they meet nine hunters running from the barn toward the blind, whereupon the hunters divide themselves into two groups of seven, one of which runs back to the barn while the other rushes to the blind, changes hats and mustaches, leaves two of its members there and dashes back to the barn.

8. Of the twelve hunters now in the blind, nine now rush across the fields to the barn while twelve of the thirteen hunters in the barn charge en masse from the barn to the blind; on arrival they immediately turn and sashay back to the barn taking two of the three hunters still in the blind, leaving a single hunter.

9. It is, of course, essential that all this be done at the highest possible speed, so that the crows will fall hopelessly behind in their arithmetic and in the consequent corvine confusion fail to realize that a hunter is concealed in the blind.

10. Eventually, the crows will learn to count faster, so that the system must be modified occasionally to keep ahead of them. In addition to having the hunters run faster, it may be necessary to introduce false beards and quick-change toupees as well as false mustaches, and to build a second blind on another side of the field so that the traffic will be triangular instead of simply linear, requiring the crows to start working on trigonometric permutations and geometric progressions in order to cope. In severe cases the hunters may be equipped with numbered jerseys from 1 to 25 but with the number 17 omitted and two numbers 21s. (This can also be done with roman numerals, when birds are very wary.)

Well, you asked for it, readers, and you got it. Watch this space next month for an equally simple fool-proof system for outwitting that wily old woodchuck in the back pasture, requiring no special equipment other than a stuffed Guernsey cow and a milkmaid's costume. Remember -- you saw it here first!

We got creeks, cricks, streams, and rivers here. They all look about the same, except a "stream" is only fresh water, up in the woods.. Clear anything up?,

What's the difference between a branch and a run?

Lot's of "runs" around our area

No Brooks???

That is my niece but she uses an E in there. Brooke.

I knew a dancer once named Brooks. Went through a lot of dollar bills.......

Don't any of you guys have runs? We have lots of runs around my camp in north central Pennsylvania; Elk Lick Run, Wild Boy Run, Thunder Run, Stony Lick Run, Sawmill Run, Indian Run and many more.

We even have some branches in the area; Pig's Ear Branch, Slide Hollow Branch, Sunken Branch, etc.

Runs and branches are kissing cousins to cricks.

Nothing like trapping in a nice Crick! I grew up trapping in a Crick on our family farm. Creeks are for those who are too high faluten to be seen with us Crick folks! LOL
Patrick McManus was one of my favorite authors growing up. I think I still have the full collection of his books somewhere.

I try to avoid the runs.

Around here its a crick,,,unless your one of them "Fancy Lads"

I catch a lot of creek chubs in the cricks around here.

We consider both the same, but I believe what people call them is territorial and the region they live in. Stream, creek or crick all are moving water in some small fraction other than a river.

It is pretty simple. If you call a creek a crick what do you call the cloth material that you put on your bed? Sheets or Shiits??????

Is a bayou a large crick?

A Stream must be for affluent people......

A bayou is a big bogue.

The difference between a violin and a fiddle.
A violin has strings.

A fiddle has strangs.

Rickey

Creek is the highfalutin folks fly fish for trout. A crick is where real people go noodle flatheads.

Yup

Dago Creek.

The fiddle is ok to get some beer poured on it the violin not so much but not a dime difference between them. Lol

Good post And itis well explained that every one can understand I no longer recall the author but one of the outdoor humor writers did a article on compasses And one line went something along the lines concerning a brand name of a compass company named Tate's Some how the company went wrong and had a curse put on it .So any compass that was sold was defective And there fore the owner of the Tate company compas would be infested with lice .And that is how the phrase He who has a Tates (hesitates) is loused .Of more urgent concern for me is the nut use to make the great southern dessert Pecan pie pronounced PEE CAN pie or is the proper pronunciation PA Kann

We have a lot of "drains" here too. Usually big ditches made by the county or landowner at some point.

So is it- Good Lord willing and the crick don't rise?

Arnold Slick is from Turtle Crick.

Spell check here says crick is ok.
Next County over? Probably not lol.

Here they’re called a dredge ditch.

According to McMannus men don't squat, they hunker, and wrote a good piece describing the art of hunkering down in detail.

I had a crick in my neck overnight but the bed wasn't wet when I woke up.

A "Crick" you can jump over. A "Creek" you can't without using a few rocks.

A "Stream" is one bigger just before you get to "River" which you can navigate a canoe or boat in.

That's the official meaning of each. Made up by me and I'm not budging.

A branch is on a tree and a run is what bored people do for exercise.

Here we have brooks not cricks or creeks.