mjfox6 said:
You just have to run a hot and a ground wire up high. They touch both when they jump up and get zapped. Would love to see a video of that!
Yeah, a terrific video of a deer hanging trapped tangled in wire up in the air on an electric fence kicking and struggling as it is shocked till it dies of fright or is strangled by the wire or bleeds to death from any serious injuries.
I don't know how we ever got by without employing those advanced techniques.
Even a plain low hot wire when first put up can tangle up a deer and be a hassle for you, having to redo it and maybe round up cattle strayed somewhere.
Around here the cattlemen tie little white strips of cloth on all new electric fences so the resident deer population will see the fence and not get tangled in it. Letting them get tangled in it is bad for the deer and bad for the cattleman.
No peanut butter is harmed in this operation. Deer and cattle not previously experienced with electric fences or the white cloth will investigate the tied on cloth by sniffing it and yes it is comical to see the reaction when the fence nips them, usually once per customer but some have to try it again just to be sure. After that the deer will know the fence and jump over it, step through if spacing permits, or crawl under. Deer usually wander over about 1000 acres or more and are pretty familiar with it. New unmarked electric fences are nearly invisible at night and will often be damaged by deer before they become aware of their existence.
I still think electric fencing way up high is dumb. I understand the concept of the elevated ground wire. Multi-wire electric fences often run a ground wire as one or more of the strands. The only way a deer can experience the training shock is if it has already leaped high up into the fence and likely become entangled in it. At that point, shocking the deer is not of much utility (whatever your sense of humor.)
Purposely building a fence that can only train an animal away from it by "snaring" it (in a potentially life threatening manner) is not particularly clever.
The purpose of an electric fence is to train an animal to avoid it. It works best when animals are not running at high speed toward the fence as they will crash through it or become tangled before they learn (by a shock) to avoid it.
Marking a fence so it is easily visible to deer is a GOOD THING. Then you need to make a fence that the deer will not want to jump over after they see its configuration. When protecting isolated specimen plants/trees from deer you need to have the plant encircled by the fence and far enough away so the deer can't get its mouth on the part you are protecting. Also you don't want the fence far away from the plant enough to give the deer a comfortable landing zone.
There are a lot of "methods" of keeping deer out of an area like a garden. Just about all of them have seemed to work for some folks in some circumstances: human hair, coyote urine, Egyptian death masks, burning incense, and on and on. If you really want to keep deer out you need a physical barrier that they can't get under, through, or over and that is visible so they can see it and know they can't jump it.
You could use anti-personnel land mines but it is unlikely that you will train deer to avoid the mine field. If the task is to exclude deer from an area without killing or injuring deer you need a physical barrier with the attributer's listed above (like the song about too wide, can't get around it, too low, can't get under it, etc...)
There are other methods involving high tech approaches using motion detectors, high decibel audio (ultrasonic doesn't disturb you or neighbors, just all the critters within hundreds of yards.) Sprinklers on motion detectors and flashing lights with or without noise and water spray... all have been tried, some work some of the time.
I suppose a non lethal LASER automatically aimed at any moving IR target could inflict enough pain to train deer away from your area but liability considerations when you blind the neighbor's dog or kid or raise a blister on either would be a consideration.
Anything less than a physical barrier as described above is not a sure thing or is probably too dangerous RE collateral damage.
A fence to keep a dog inside the garden with the right dog(s) might be a good plan if the dogs didn't ruin anything in the garden.
Pat
