Plenty of if's, and's, and but's, but you can be creative on your grounding, but I wouldn't try it with an AC charger. If lightning strikes your fence and the charger isn't grounded, your house wiring will take the hit. I use solar and battery operated chargers with the 1 ft ground stake but my fences are no more than 600 meters long and the ground is moist. Lightning strikes ruin only the charger (if the lightning kits don't work). For me, AC chargers aren't worth the hassel of installing them to a standard that will keep your insurance rates reasonable and damages fixed by the insurance company if something happens. Dave

That's fine if it is grounded. However, the plastic pipe is not a conductor, so it insulates the snake from the grounded post. By spiraling the hot wire and the ground wire up the plastic a few inches apart, anything trying to climb will end up contacting both the hot wire and the ground, insuring they get a good treatment. With anything that is climbing, you cannot be completely certain that they have good ground contact when going up the post, so having the ground wire going up the post also insures they get grounded. I use electric fence to keep the coons and skunks out of the sweet corn (not to mention for grazing livestock). At first, I had a couple hot wires and somehow the coons kept getting through. Then it was suggested that I alternate a hot wire a couple inches above the earth, then a ground wire 4-6 inches above that, followed by another hot wire above that. It worked tremendously. A coon pushing under gets good earth and wire contact. One trying to climb over or through will contact one of the hot wires and the ground wire, so there is no way through. On top of that, if the dirt is dry, the earth doesn't make that good of a ground for the coon (all that fur and all), so having the center ground wire tends to insure the coons try to go between the wires and get zapped. That's why I suggest it with the snake--as it climbs the plastic post, it will contact alternating hot and ground wires and get a good zap. If the center post is metal, it will be grounded by being pounded into the earth, however it will not provide a ground to the snake until the snake starts climbing above the plastic with the hot wire. At this point, the snake has nearly completed the obstacle course. I'd rather start hitting the critter when it first gets to the post.

Just remember when you put in the fence, don't let the netting touch the chicken wire or the chain link fence or you will ground it out and torpedo your efforts. The fence you linked to has alternating hot and ground wires, so if the squirrels try to climb the fence, they will get zapped when they bridge two wires. Squirrels are smart and if they is any way to go over the fence and drop in, such as on an overhanging tree branch, they will figure that out. Coons aren't nearly as ingenious and it is pretty easy to have a couple low, alternating hot-ground wires and they will leave you alone.

Johnny, I believe Plan B is likely to work. For a few years, we kept the deer mostly out of the garden by having two fences, the outer one three feet tall and the inner one four feet tall. The inner fence was spaced either 3 or 4' from the outer fence, leaving an area between the two fences that was just wide enough to deter the deer. This were based on the knowledge that deer can jump high, deer can jump wide, but deer cannot jump high and wide at the same time. Being a gardener, though, I couldn't leave an empty "moat" of bare soil (or weeds) between the two fences, so I planted flowers there. Of course, the deer often reached over the 3' fence and ate the flowers, but they couldn't or at least wouldn't eat the veggies that were growing safely behind the second fence. It was similar to the last fence design you linked, only we just had woven wire fencing instead of electric fencing. We built the garden in 1999. For the first couple of years, it only had a 3' tall fence but the deer didn't bother it that much. Once they started reaching over the fence and eating, we put up the inner fence. That worked until maybe 2007 or 2008. Some smart deer figured out it could jump the outer fence in a sort of sideways hop and land within the "moat" of flowers growing between the two fences. Then, one more sideways hop and it was in the big garden with the veggies. So, I put up the string to trick the deer into thinking the fence was taller, and I tied white grocery store type plastic bags at about eye level to one strand of the string "fence". I was hoping the white bags moving in the wind would look like a white deer tail signaling danger. It seemed to work okay during the day but not so much at night. So, eventually, we raised the height of the fence. Since raising the fence height to 8', we have only had deer in the garden if some forgetful person failed to close and latch the gate. I have seen fence designs similar to your plan B fence, including in a Texas Landscaping book that I had. I showed that one to our neighbor who lives west of our back property line. His place is the only house between us and the Red River and he has both deer and copperhead snakes in such huge numbers that it is mind-boggling. Our deer and snake problems are small compared to his. I have observed over the years that the deer don't bother my garden plants so much in the good times when natural food is available, but in the drought years they will go to extremes to reach whatever they can find. In 2011, a friend of a friend of ours had two starving deer climb into a box trap used to trap feral hogs. It is hard to imagine one deer climbing into that confined space, much less two, but whatever he had in that trap to lure in the hogs also lured in those hungry deer. Because I am stubborn and pig-headed and want to get the most production possible from my garden space, I grow climbing plants on my 8' tall fence---everything from southern peas like Red Ripper to all kinds of pole beans, vining cucumbers, and winter squash. Inevitably, the deer chew on everything that is on the deer side of the fence, but on the inside of the fence, I still get plenty of harvest. They mostly only nibble foliage and not so much the stems or flowers. I often mix in morning glories randomly here and there because the deer avoid them most of the time, and often don't eat the plants interplanted with the morning glories on the fence. I still have trouble with coons climbing the fence and getting into the corn, but have mostly put a halt to that by growing a wide border (not so wide I cannot step over it) of milk thistle around the corn. There's not much that seems to deter the coons, but milk thistle's prickly leaves do. I start the milk thistle plants inside and transplant them into the ground to get them a head start so that they'll be big enough to keep the coons out by the time we have ripening ears of corn. The only drawback to milk thistle is that it much have very well drained soil and lower rainfall. In a year with heavier rainfall, the plants rot off right at the soil surface. Keep us posted on how the fence works for you. Dawn