That being said, your critter is probably ransacking your garden at night, yes? If the critter you want to shock has thick skin, then you'll want a decent AC charger to zap the culprit hard and make him respect the boundary.

Could something have climbed your wire fence?

I think the best wire is the cheapest wire. I use those yellow or black plastic stand offs. Some can be nailed directly to the fence or the fence posts. Others are designed for T posts which is an easy solution if you don't have other posts. I have plenty of deer and rabbits so my wires go from 2-3 inches off the ground up to 9' high. If you already have a fence, I would think one wire would do the trick.

You haven't actually described your damage. What are you seeing? You are familiar with gophers??

If I had it to do over, I would be more particular about setting my 4x4 posts. I should have added more rocks to prevent the posts from sagging inward. I certainly wouldn't use cement since I may want to move them. Doesn't look so sharp but it keeps the critters out if I remember to turn it on!

I'm not understanding your question about difficulty about stringing the wire. If you wanted, you could use one roll of wire attached at one end with slack by the charger, and slipped between each stand off around and around all the posts or fences at ever higher levels (or not) depending on your height needs. As I learned afterward, it would have been wiser to have run the wire around the inside of the posts to prevent them getting shorted on the wooden posts at one of the corners. The stand offs only stood off on one side. More judicous nailing of the standoffs to the exact edge of the posts might work as well. If you are going outside of part of a fence, then going inside the post probably won't be possible.

There are earlier posts showing that some folks were not having good luck with the pulse chargers to control larger animals like raccoons. This is the reason why many folks will go with the constant charge fence transformers.

I too had problems with groundhogs. I have a small fence, about 3', just above the top of which I run a line of electric fence tape. My theory is that the groundhog will hit his head on this, and get a shock (these things do have quite a jolt). So far this has worked well. It is a hassle to run a tape down near the ground, due to the weeds, and I don't do this and don't need to, since the fence keeps things out at this level. I strongly support the suggestion to make sure you have a ground rod going deep into the ground; in fact, I use two 6' rods linked together -- this really makes a difference to the power of the fence.

In any case, now that you mention it, I believe it was the low voltage pulse chargers that were being defeated by the coons. And perhaps the cause was not with the pulsing alone but also with grounding out the low voltage charge. One blade of grass contacting the wire will drop the charge on my constant fence charger about 200 volts.

Steps I've taken in defense: 1. put bird netting across top of 6 foot deer fence; 2. Knitted edges of netting together when they found it was easy to go between; 3. Ringed lower part of plastic deer fence with chicken wire to keep them from eating a hole to enter through; 4. Used wolf urine as a deterrent; 5. sprayed tomatoes with hot pepper spray that I made with garden's hot peppers, and 6. I try to plug obvious holes as I plan on a higher fence (our tomato plants are growing to about 6 feet + the raised bed) and either a squirrel proof roofing material, but would prefer a ring of electric fence at the top of the side fencing. SUGGESTIONS ?