I'm going to quote myself to say even the above isnt perfect. A deer got in last night and nibbled on a bunch of first year grapes, luckily they'll all survive but the fact remains that short of motion sensing gun turrets, life finds a way.

The bastards! I took a 4 day weekend to camp and fish with family I look forward to checking my garden/trail cam/electric fence tomorrow

It was the below that lead me to think that.



Because the fence doesn't actually get hot the tape won't melt or fry, that would require a source of heat.

And small clarification, the fence doesn't have AC current on it. AC fence chargers rectify it to DC and use an inductance coil to amplify the voltage into super short pulses of high voltage DC. But even then, DC is a bit of a misnomer bc it's such a short pulse or burst.

Have you ever seen how a ram pump works to pump water uphill w/o any external energy source except the water flowing down? It's the same principle except with electrons. Electrons flowing on a wire have "inertia" as well but it's called inductance. If you let them flow freely on a long length of wire (often in the form of a coil) then slam the switch shut, the voltage spikes really high.


ETA, I realize this is a little off-topic, just thought it was a good place to throw in the operating principles of a fence charger for anyone that is curious.

I was going to post this. A folded pie plate with peanut butter inside, hung on the hot wire attracts them and the shock tells them it's not worth it.

When I was a kid we had a pretty large sweet corn garden (large for a family corn garden that wasn't going to be sold), maybe about an acre and a half. The deer would decimate that thing sometimes. We used to stick a battery-powered radio out there at night. Honestly don't remember just how effective it was, but I remember we kept on doing it so maybe it helped.

Thinking about trying the same thing in the potato patch this year. Last year the deer starting eating the potato plants. I think that was the first time I ever remember them doing that, and they seem to have developed a taste for it because they're doing it again this year. Might give the radio thing a shot, that's the quickest/easiest thing to try I think.

Could also try sitting out there a couple nights with the PVS14 and shoot them with a paintball gun. That might throw them off. And if it doesn't, it will still be fun.

We have a small garden that i put in this year specifically designed to be low maintenance as it's on our vacant land and we live half an hour away so I usually only make it up a couple of times a week.  We've had some deer parties happening on our cell based trail cam, they haven't eaten any of the kitchen garden but they've browsed some of the ornamental bulbs that are popping up.  I picked up some fish emulsion fertilizer.  It's supposed to be a deer deterrent in addition to fertilizing the plants.